Chicago Tribune from Chicago, Illinois • 131

Chicago Tribune, Friday, October 12, 1984 Section 7 MfiV is- 1 II is I if i ii 1 A Anne Bancroft plays an eccentric in search of Greta Garbo. Cliche-ridden 'Garbo Talks' doesn't have much to say rV i A r-v v. 1 A1 By Gene Siskel Movie critic ou would UKe to near Greta Garbo talk. I i would like to hear i Greta Garbo talk. But Ai vmi unnt in hpar "Garbo Talks" Mini-review: No, she doesn't.

Directed toy Sidney Lumet; written by Larry Gruain; photographed by Andrzej BartKowiak; edited by Andrew Mondahein; music by Cy Coleman; produced by Bum Harris and Elliott Kaatner; an MGMUA release at the Water Tower Theater. Rated PG. THE CAST Estelle Rolfe Anne Bancroft 1 Gilbert Rolfe Ron Sliver Lisa Rolfe Carrie Fisher Jane Mortimer Catherine Hicks i Walter Rolfe Steven Hill 4 Angelo Dokakia Howard Da Sllva Sonya Apollinar Dorothy Loudon Bernie Whitlock Harvey Fierstein Elizabeth Rennick. Hermione Gingoid i kill 0.1 1 ia i i i i.l 11 .1 1,1 'i (. Uri 1.111k...

iiiU'l' IMC. 1 1 J) HUH iRi II rfl I iMi i fil 11 II I I' lli 1 ii I. I- rlf fli. 1 1 Anne Bancroft talk to the back of the head of an actress pretending to be Garbo? That's the big payoff scene in "Garbo Talks, an old-fashioned "women's picture" that turns out to be a saccharine tribute to a great movie star and to that old show business cliche the character with a fatal illness. Bancroft plays Estelle Rolfe, a stereotypical tough-talking, New York Jewish lady with a heart of gold.

How tough is she? Well, she's so committed to supporting labor "unions that she wouldn't cross a picket line to go to her own son's wedding. And if she's walking down the street and hears a couple of construction workers whistle and holler at a cute young woman, she's not above climbing on a crane and bawling out the loutish workers. What a gal! Obviously we're supposed to fall in love with Estelle, but she is so overwritten that there is no sense of reality to anything she does. And it doesn't get any easier when we learn that Estelle has contracted a fatal disease and has only a few months to live. Her dying wish is to meet and talk with her favorite movie star, Greta Garbo.

That's right, the "I want to be alone" Greta Garbo, who at age 79 can occasionally be spotted walking around New York in sunglasses, floppy hat and trenchcoat. Estelle is too sick to go searching for Garbo herself; she spends the last half of the movie on her back in a hospital bed. So it's up to her puppy dog of a son Ron Silver to do mommy's bidding. He gets one of his best leads working as a delivery man for a gourmet food shop that counts a certain Scandinavian "Mrs. Brown" a frequent Garbo alias as one of its customers.

But, of course, sonny boy blows this opportunity only because, It's too early in the film for "Garbo" to make her entrance. "Garbo Talks" might have been more compel in a if it was up to Estelle herselt to track Garbo through film also could have been a potentially more provocative, bittersweet comedy if Estelle had decided at the end that she didn't need to meet the old Garbo after all; her films were enough. Instead, "Garbo Talks" marks time until the inevitable hospital scene between Estelle and the Garbo character by focusing on Estelle's son on the breakup of his marriage to a hateful cariacature of a woman played by a barely recognizable Carrie Fisher and on his affair with a cute, liberated coworker Catherine Hicks. As good as a character actor as Silver has been in other movies, he is an embarrassment here, playing a whispering, plaintive milquetoast. Now, about that final scene between Estelle and the film's Garbo, as corny as it may be, the scene works.

Estelle reviews her life in terms of Garbo's films while the camera slowly pushes into her face, and Bancroft makes it work like a soppy telephone scene in other movies. Obviously this was the big scene that sold Bancroft on making the movie, and it does turn out to be the best scene in the movie, even though it is infuriating when Garbo doesn't reply. But what's more upsetting is that very little genuine emotion precedes that scene. Oh, there plenty of emotion in "Garbo Talks, but most of it is false because virtually every scene is overwritten. It's elementary screenwriting that the more preposterous the premise, the more realistic the script should be.

The writer of "Garbo Talks" doesn't follow that rule, and what could have been a charming, offbeat film is turned into mush. WOODS PLAZA BOLINCBROOK CENTURY DEERBRQOK DIANA EVERCREEN Downtown Chicago Boiingbrook Hoffman Estates Deerf leid Homewood Evergreen Park Midnight show nightly COLFCLEN GRIFFITH PARK HARLEM-CERMAK HILLSIDE SO. NORRIDCE ORLAND SO. Niles Griffith, in North Riverside Hillside Norridge Oriand Park ST. CHARLES STRATFORD SO.

TOWN N' COUNTRY DRIVE-INS: BEL-AIR 53 St. Charles Bloomlngdale Arlington Heights Cicero Palatine Mernliviile, IN What's Mother Nature got up her sleeve? check the Wesihsr Psca Monday-Saturday.