From: L-Bueno@cup.portal.com (Louis Alberto Bueno)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies
Subject: GENERATIONS IN CONFLICT IN 'FATHERS & SONS'
Date: Sun,  8 Nov 92 20:45:08 PST
Organization: The Portal System (TM)
Distribution: world

GENERATIONS IN CONFLICT IN `FATHERS, SONS'
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By Michael Wilmington
Special to the Los Angeles Times 11/05/92

	   HOLLYWOOD _ ``Fathers and Sons'' has nothing to do with Ivan
Turgenev's great 19th-century Russian novel, and more's the pity.
	   Instead, this well-meaning, lugubrious tale of generational
Angst and turmoil, focuses on a modern father and son, Max and Ed Fish. Set
mostly in Asbury Park on the Jersey shoreline, Bruce Springsteen territory,
it's written and directed by Paul Mones, the young filmmaker who made
1988's art vs. prejudice gang fable ``The Beat.'' This one is clogged with
symbols, too.
	   Mones' movie strains at the seams for literary cachet.
Protagonist Max, played by Jeff Goldblum at his most gloweringly
intellectual, is a Manhattan filmmaker, father and widower turned suburban
bookshop owner. One of the villains is a serial killer who distributes his
own crazed vanity press literature _ and is played by an actual novelist,
Michael ``Dizzy'' Disend. The local community theater puts on an
experimental adaptation of ``Don Quixote,'' with Max as the knight. And,
when Mones wants to show communication breakdown between father and son, he
snazzes it up with internal monologues: moony, ocean-inspired recitals that
almost suggest a Woody Allen version of ``Strange Interlude.''
	   The movie focuses on the troubled relationship between Max and
Ed (Rory Cochrane), a silent type who is becoming involved, through his
buddy Smiley (Mitchell Marquand), with some local drug-dealing scum. But it
is structured in a way that keeps comparing Max's life to Ed's. Father
moves through a healthy, culturally correct world of little theater, books,
marathon races and flirtations. Son sinks in a teen-age wasteland of drugs
and under-the-boardwalk sex, an adolescent subculture revolving around a
fictitious black hallucinogenic gum called ``Chew.'' Father and son, we're
often reminded, aren't dissimilar; they even gravitate toward racially
mixed groups. (Joie Lee and Sam Jackson are in the ``Don Quixote'' troupe
and, are, to put it mildly, wasted.) Why can't they talk together?
	   Perhaps Mones is too infatuated with internal monologues. By the
end, he has Max and Ed reading minds; there's even a fortuneteller, played
by Rosanna Arquette. It's also suggested that Max's new life as a
bookseller is cleaner, purer than filmmaking. At one point, John McGinley
(of Oliver Stone's troupe) shows up at Fish's door, excitedly announcing
that he has found the money to produce a script Max wrote 10 years ago, and
Max turns him down _ because he doesn't like the person he used to be when
he was directing films.
	   ``Fathers and Sons'' has the same general theme as Robert
Redford's fine adaptation of Norman Maclean's ``A River Runs Through It'' _
generational and cultural conflict among men _ but, ironically, this
low-budget labor-of-love, shot for about $1 million, seems more compromised
by movie cliches than the mainstream ``River.'' Should Mones really have
tried to make this a low-key mood and relationship piece and then thrown in
drug deals, gun play and a serial killer?
	   ``Fathers and Sons'' (MPAA rated R for language, sensuality and
drug use) has a rich core notion. Everything Ed is going through mirrors
Max's '60s past _ and he's too concerned with being a non-judgmental parent
to lay down the law. There's great comic-dramatic potential there, but
Mones misses most of it; he may be one more example of a director too stuck
on his own writing, someone who needs a script collaborator. Every once in
a while, there's an affecting scene: Max and Ed reaching out. Or a funny
one: Ellen Green, who plays Dulcinella in the local ``Quixote,'' does a
brilliantly observed car-seat sex tease. But mostly ``Fathers and Son''
makes you wish you were reading Turgenev instead.<

	   A Pacific Pictures release of a Jon Kilik production.
Director-Screenplay Paul Mones. Producer Jon Kilik. Executive producers
Nick Weschler, Keith Addis. Cinematographer Ron Fortunato. Editor Janice
Keuhnelian. Music Mason Darling. Production design Eve Cauley. Running
time: 1 hour, 40 minutes.

	   MPAA-rated R (Language, violence, sensuality, drug use).
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