Word: jaking
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...second week of May saw the nation spellbound by the President's agonized dithering over a Supreme Court nominee, a development for which there wasn't really a Melrose Place equivalent -- unless you count Jake's ping-ponging between sexy, bitchy Amanda and not-as-sexy, pregnant Jo. But get this: Clinton, his writers even more shameless than Aaron Spelling's, was torn between three possible candidates, though the President betrayed a misunderstanding of basic genre requirements in that none of his picks looked good in a halter top (still, some people admit to finding Bruce Babbitt cute...
...obvious attempt at explore Jake's inner psyche, the movie gets lost along the way, caught up in its own artistic gimmicry. It fails to render any of its allegedly soulful characters believable--or even likeable. Instead, Jake's profound quest in life (for a brilliant career and a beautiful wife, of course) becomes a megalomaniacal alternate reality where the world centers upon him. Gorillas give him advice, faces carved into a stone wall give him advice, and important people from his life keep popping up at random times to give him advice. This kooky, off-the-wall style...
...movie indicates how Jake inhabited this solipsistic reality even as a baby, when he was spun around on a lazy-susan at a Chinese restaurant. From his perspective, the world literally revolved around...
Because of, or aside from the Jake's egocentricity, the other main characters are decidedly unreal. Joanne, Jake's sunshine on a cloudy day, is more or less consumed by her permanent spaced-out fog, and never expresses passion for him very convincingly. Ralph Macchio, appearing as Chris's prepubescent-looking best friend, undermines his karate kid persona with a wussy performance. Flailing emotionally throughout the movie, Macchio is especially unconvincing in his rendition of Chris's repressed homosexual love for Jake...
...less distressingly, truly spectacular actors appear in farcical and overdone bit parts, Whoppi Goldberg fulfils the rather insignificant role of Jake's mother's quirky side-kick, as well as popping up successively as a hard-hat construction worker, a marching band conductor on an interstate, and the mask of comedy in the stone-work of an off-Broadway theater. Kathleen Turner appears as a over-sexed soap-opera star who, in spite of her potentially exciting role as temptress, never makes her presence felt. Timothy Dalton is, however, somewhat elegant in his suave portrayal of the wheeler-dealer gallery...