Word: midlerisms
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Prickly as porcupines, Deborah and Nick Fifer (Bette Midler and Woody Allen) wander the aisles of a shopping mall that probably exceeds Ralph's palace in square footage, confessing infidelities and trying to patch up a marriage that only this morning looked as solid as the British monarchy. They are constantly distracted by the consumerism bustling around them and by a mime (Bill Irwin) who is as nosy as he is silent and maybe the most amusing thing about the film...
...wouldn't be King if he could help it, Goodman redeems what might have been just another high-concept comedy for the party of humanity. Despite the fact that they are working a much more subtle idea -- an attempt to resolve a private crisis in an impersonally public place -- Midler and Allen rarely attain believability, let alone sympathy, as the troubled pair of getters and spenders...
...become our designated Everyman, a Ralph Kramden for the '90s but without the splenetic splutter of Jackie Gleason's immortal creation. An intelligence, a sensitivity he can't quite articulate, just possibly a slight sadness, lurk behind Goodman's eyes, and they ground everything he does in reality. Midler, on the other hand, is our great show-biz floozy, and Allen personifies the anxious urban intellect. It is hard to insert their screen personas into the kind of normal, middle- class lives they are supposed to inhabit here. They require highly stylized vehicles in order to do their best work...
Joining Collins in the competition for record of the year were last year's winner, Bette Midler, for "From A category were Melissa Etheridge, Distance;" Sinead O'Connor for "Nothing Compares 2 U;" M.C. Hammer for "U Can't Touch This;" and Carey for "Vision of Love." Midler won in 1990 for "Wind Beneath My Wings...
...writer Ben Margulies, and Wilson Phillips' Chynna Phillips and Carnie Wilson, also picked up nominations for song of the year, a songwriters' award. Prince also was nominated in this category for "Nothing Compares 2 U," the hit he wrote for O'Connor, along with Collins and Julie Gold for Midler's "From A Distance...