Word: whoopi
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That mouth, impish or hellacious, is where Whoopi Goldberg goes one up on the world. Twist it, she's a funny little troll. Smile like the Queen of Sheba, she is the Queen of Sheba, a knee-weakening beauty (don't doubt it; like Meryl Streep, who's also less than a stunner, Whoopi can play beauty). Shove out her jaw, she's a bad-mouth male junkie -- yeah, name's Fontaine, attitude's his game, what's your problem? Flash that 82-toothed thousand- watter, time to watch your wallet. Smile shyly, she's a little kid, you want...
What is needed here is a mouth alert -- THIS IS NOT A TEST, YOU ARE IN REAL DANGER, LOCAL AUTHORITIES ARE HIDING IN THE CELLAR WITH A JUG -- because Whoopi, dreadlocks, attitude and all, is branching out. Quick, what does the worldy night and twice on Saturday. The negatives, as they say in politics, are encouraging: no monologue, no band to tootle when inspiration flags, no giggling studio audience to which the camera can pan, and no Dan Quayle jokes unless Quayle himself makes them...
...early guests. So are Bo Jackson, the retired two-sport flash, white supremacist Thomas Metzger, and the usual show-biz suspects, including Liz Taylor, Elton John and Tim Robbins. Violinist Itzhak Perlman is $ scheduled, and California senate candidate Dianne Feinstein is already taped. Whoopi wants to reason together with Pat Buchanan, who hopes to wall off the Mexican border, and with Pat Robertson, who believes that feminism leads to witchcraft. (Is Robertson right? Or does sanctimoniousness lead to prattle? Tune in and find...
...rate, hard to go one up on Whoopi. Actor colleagues in a San Francisco rep company didn't succeed in the early '80s, when they nicknamed her for a dim-witted novelty-store joke. "I was very flatulent," she explains with an angelic smile. "So for a while it was 'Whoopi Cushion.' Then, for a touch of class, 'Whoopi Couchant.' So I thought, Why not? I'll be Whoopi. But Whoopi Johnson just doesn't cut it." (You figure that one out; her name then was Caryn Johnson.) So she rummaged among her family names and came up with some...
Anyway, it stinks of calculation. The film -- about a Reno singer (Whoopi Goldberg) finding refuge from her gangster lover (Harvey Keitel) in a dilapidated convent run by staid Maggie Smith -- allows no room for irony, vagrant inspiration or air. There's something piquant about the look of Whoopi in a wimple, but the star must soar or sink with the vehicle, and this one is a bathysphere. Despite a nice turn by Kathy Najimy as a criminally chirpy nun and some inventive charts by ace arranger Marc Shaiman, Sister Act has corporate fingerprints smudging its smiling face...