Word: whodunitism
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KAFKA. In his first film since sex, lies, and videotape, Steven Soderbergh serves up a flimsy whodunit starring Kafka (played by Jeremy Irons, the male Meryl). It's a film-school movie, with devices lifted from The Third Man: vertiginous staircases, malevolence glistening off the cobblestones, a madman's drool caught in the Prague moonlight. As someone murmurs, "All a bit much, don't you think?" Yes, pity -- and not nearly enough...
RISING SUN by Michael Crichton (Knopf; $22). Japan-bashing has never been more exquisitely calibrated for best-sellerdom. There is a whodunit at the heart of this commercial thriller, but the identity of the bad guys is never in any doubt. Lay out some plastic for this novel before publishers' row becomes a subsidiary of Sony...
...BOOKS Whodunit? Japan, says Michael Crichton's troubling thriller...
Crichton's mood has darkened, and in his new novel, he does not bother with questions. It is the reader who asks those. In structure, the story is a whodunit -- a policeman is obstructed by powerful opponents as he solves the murder of a party girl who is strangled in a Los Angeles office. But the building is owned by a Japanese consortium. The opponents are Japanese businessmen, Japanese gangsters and, it seems, the entire Japanese society...
...part of the foolishness. They can join a conga line at Song of Singapore (1), play Heart and Soul with the nerdish vocal quartet in Forever Plaid (2), be a beauty- contest judge at Pageant (3), hum along at Forbidden Broadway 1991 1/2 (4), be a suspect in the whodunit plot at a Hasselfree murder mystery (5) or stand to recite the Pledge of Allegiance at Prom Queens Unchained (6). For warm- weather theatergoers in search of an easy evening out, the shows provide organized fun with a hip parodic wink -- a blend of summer camp and . . . summer camp...