The Des Moines Register from Des Moines, Iowa • Page 53

The Des Moines Register batebook June 9, 1988 5D 1 BETTE MIDLER LILY TOMLIN LILY TOMLIN and BETTE MIDLER Mixed up at birth, two sets of twins finally meet their match. BIG BUSINESS Two's company; four's a riot. TOUCHSTONE PICTURES mSSi SILVER SCREEN PARTNERS 01 BETTE MIDLER ULY TOMLIN "BIO BUSINESS" DOHPIERSON.MARCRUBEL STEVE TCCH-MICHAEL PEYSER JIM ABRAHAMS MM ti MM AU IUB 05 WIM HfMWMMhtM STARTS CENTURY FRIDAY: 2:45, 4:55, 7:30, nn-'tjir mnopoases to sneak just one more cigarette is good-humored enough to be entertaining, especially if you catch the drift of the Italian dialogue. Lady in White, written and directed by Frank LaLoggia, produced by LaLoggia and Andrew G. LaMarca, with Lukas Haas, Len Cariou, Alex Rocco, Jason Presson, Kather-ine Helmond, at the Century and Westwood theaters.

New Sky Productions. (PG-13, violence.) Running time: 1 12 minutes. On a rising scale of zero to five stars: y2 'Invisible Kid' bares the skin Combining a science lab, bubbling green slime, a pigeon's contribution and a goofy plot with echoes of "My Science Project," "Weird Science" and "Back to the Future," writer-director Avery Crounse delivers The Invisible Kid, a teen-flick in which the comedy inspiration itself is all but invisible, too. This is a variation on that favorite teen theme, "Let's get naked." It features a dweeb who turns into a cool kid, his disloyal sidekick, a pretty blonde girlfriend, a jock and a venal gas-bag of a principal who has stolen the breakthrough formula the dweeb's dead father left as his only totally tangled legacy. Grover Dunn (Jay Underwood) tinkers with Dad's formula.

Then, a passing pigeon transforms green gook into sparkling dust, which renders any consumer instantly, but temporarily, invisible. What a find! What opportunities in the girls' locker room! What a great way to undo the jock Donny Zanders (Nicolas de Toth) on the basketball floor and grab his girlfriend Cindy (Chynna Phillips)! What a lot of exclaiming over nothing! Enter Principal Baxter (John Tow-ey). Now that he has stolen the formula, he needs to pile up development capital, so he has teamed up with some bad-guy bettors and is forcing Donny the jock to shave points as Valleyville High's basketball team enters the championship finals. Meanwhile, Grover is trying to get Dad's original formula back from the nasty principal, prove his genius and make a million. That means undercover work of a special kind.

Swallow the formula, strip off your clothes and do your undercover work while invisible. The kicker is that there's a time limit on invisibility, and it diminishes with each pop. Which allows for a lot of bare skin, considerable snickering and the usual number of nude jokes on a eompared-to-what theme. It's too bad that movies still have to run 90 minutes or thereabouts so we feel we've had our money's worth. "The Invisible Kid," which at 95 minutes seems to go on forever, might be quite entertaining at, say, half an hour.

The Invisible Kid, written and directed by Avery Crounse, produced by Philip J. Spinel-li, with Jay Underwood, Wally Ward, Chynna Phillips, Mike Genovese, Nicolas de Toth, Thomas Cross, John Towey, at the Fleur and Westwood theaters. Taurus Entertainment-Elysian Pictures. (PG, nudity, adult situations.) Running time: 95 minutes. On a rising scale of zero to five stars: Continued from Page 4D vine wind" to wipe out the enemy.

One of the goofiest jokes perpetrated by writer-director Mick Garris is as sexist as they come: No-Face inspired by a Playboy center spread, and still searching for a suitable soul (and body), transforms himself into the blonde beauty, trying on her body for size. It's no surprise, is it, that with the transformation, No-face's leather battle suit doesn't manage to hide hisher new figure? The big staple at her waistline, however, is only a momentary problem, and she's off, shouting, "Kill Crites!" The goopiest of the gory jokes shows the critters, having packed themselves into an avalanche-size fur ball, rolling back toward town and smashing right over a fleeing farmer. As the camera focuses on the wide track left by the monster fur ball, we see all that's left of the farmer is a blood-red skeleton. If "Critters 2" doesn't make you laugh, it'll give you a nasty case of indigestion. Critters 2: The Main Course, directed by Mick Garris, produced by Barry Opper, written by Garris and D.

T. Twohy, with Scott Grimes, Liane Curtis, Don Opper, Barry Cor-bin and Terrence Mann, at the Forum and Fleur theaters. New Line Cinema. (PG-13, gore, violence, Playboy-style bare flesh.) Running time: 96 minutes. On a rising scale of zero to five stars: Tricky thriller is entertaining One of the plusses that writer-director Frank LaLoggia's unheralded Lady in White has going for it is the very fact that it hasn't been publicized to the point of nausea and it doesn't carry superstar names.

Thus, its professionalism and its humor, straight off the Italian-family-stereotype shelf as it may be, come as a pleasant surprise. It's a quirky, tricky, kid-centered thriller in the manner of Stephen King's early stuff. Set in 1962, it centers on big-eyed Frankie Scarlatti (Lukas Haas, the delicate-faced, all-ears youngster from Into the story of a child-killer and a weeping, ghostly lady in white who haunts the cliffs at Willowpoint Falls, LaLoggia and cinematographer Russell Carpenter blend some deliciously spine-tingling scenes of night frights and creepy-crawly violence. In fact, the terror spin they put on the "real" dangers that Frankie faces is more convincing than their special effects, which are visual rather than visceral: They catch our scared eyes but not our queasy stomachs. Locked in a school cloakroom by a couple of mean buddies, the terrified Frankie sees or maybe hallucinates the killing of little Melissa Ann Montgomery.

Then he is nearly strangled by the shadowy child-killer, who later stalks him through foggy forests and derelict houses through the rest of "Lady in White." The killer's identity is fairly obvious early on, but LaLoggia manages both pace and subterfuge well enough to keep us interested through most of the nearly two hours of his thriller. The comic relief Grandma Scarlatti keeps hassling Grandpa Scarlatti-about his smoking, but he keeps trying "The Invisible Kid" can't be found. 'Mercenary' a real bomb Count on it: Anyone capable of hatching a title as leaden as Mercenary Fighters is equal to making a movie that lives down to it. Director Riki Last She-lach, who for years has been "working his way through the ranks of the Israeli film industry," has done that in this film. Those ranks, it turns out, didn't include a short course in how to find an adventure-flick script with a fresh point of view.

"Mercenary Fighters" clomps through the customary adventure-flick territory central Africa, bombed, shelled and machine-gunned to within an inch of its foliage's life. It features the standard contingent of no-account and has-been actors: Peter Fonda, fallen upon empty performing days; Ron O'Neal, the "Superfly" actor with the commanding presence, much diminished here; blond muscle-man Reb Brown; and James Mitchum, a look-alike for his dad, Robert Mitchum, but showing no detectable acting ability. Fonda leads a bunch of American hired guns, who are "on the right side" for a change, in a campaign to clear an area of the fictional country of Shinka-sa that will be flooded when a gigantic new hydroelectric dam is built. They're under the command of Colonel Kyemba (Robert Do Qui), who is determined as part of the action to wipe out the Kurubu tribe led by Jaunde (Henry Cele). As the butchery of the rebels grows, however, the American muscleman (bearing the none-too-subtle and symbolic name, and the 'copter pilot suffer attacks of conscience (or something resembling it) With this about-face by the muscle-man (Brown) and the pilot (O'Neal), the mercenaries begin quarreling among themselves, and it is a pleasure to report, most of them eventually blow each other to kingdom come.

I used to think such movie bombs as "Mercenary Fighters" were made as tax write-offs. Nowadays, I like to blame the inventor of the VCR for the flick blight that has descended upon the feature-film industry. "Mercenary Fighters" adds 93 more minutes to that Great Big Celluloid-Garbage Spool in the Sky, and it'll be available on video-tape any moment now. Mercenary Fighters, directed by Riki She-lach, produced by Menahem Golan and Yor-am Globus, written by Bud Schaetzle, Dean Tschetter and Andrew Deutsch, with Peter Fonda, Reb Brown, Ron O'Neal, James Mitchum, Robert Do Qui, Joanna Weinberg, Henry Cele, at the Fleur and Forum theaters. Cannon.

(R, gross violence, language.) Running time: 93 minutes. On a rising scale of zero to five stars: No stars i i VIPTICKETS THIS rrn rirti 1 FRIDAY! 9:30 SIERRA FLEUR: 4:55, 7:30, 9:30 TV. msTS win- I aBsscs. SHI 31; THEY'RE STARTING FRIDAY! SHOWS FRIDAY AT: 5:00, 7:1 5, 9:1 5.