Two-For-One-Special

Garry Marshall once delivered sentimental films that didn't scrimp on substance (The Flamingo Kid, Nothing in Common), but in the past few years he's been content to plunk down cliches and wait for the registers to start ringing. He tapped our tear ducts with Beaches and then assaulted our common sense with Pretty Woman. So why should we give Marshall's working-class romance Frankie & Johnny the time of day? Well, the two obvious reasons are floating in giant letters above the film's title: Al Pacino and Michelle Pfeiffer, big enough stars to make this movie an Oscar contender before a single frame has been projected. But a surfeit of talent is no guarantee. Remember Falling in Love, the 1984 Ulu Grosbard film that went down for the count despite Robert De Niro and Meryl Streep? Remember Blind Faith?

Never one to challenge audiences, Marshall opens Frankie & Johnny with an uninspired montage in which Frankie's (Pfeiffer) trip to Altoona for a christening parallels Johnny's (Pacino) release from prison. Cliches and clumsy touches abound, from the annoying inside joke that features Penny Marshall on a magazine cover to the foolish prison-yard antics of another just-released convict. Soon Frankie has boarded the bus to return to New York City and Johnny is on the way as well, having chosen to seek his fortune in the city. They haven't even met, and already we know they're destined for one another.

In New York, Marshall dives into the street-scene with enthusiasm, if not discretion. Black teens pitch pennies into a chalk homicide outline. Rap music and ethnic bravado swell and fade on the soundtrack. At the center of this hearty urban stew stands Nick's Apollo Cafe, where Frankie spends her days waiting tables and jockeying for tips. Nick (Hector Elizondo) and the other waitresses - randy Cora (Kate Nelligan) and ugly-duckling Nedda (comedienne Jane Morris, whose puffy, chinless face gives her the appearance of a living, breathing Lynda Barry cartoon) - are Frankie's only family. At night, when she goes home, she wolfs down ice cream and falls asleep watching TV. It is an existence she claims to prefer, even purchasing a VCR to demonstrate her commitment to the solitary life.

When Johnny shows up at the Apollo to answer an ad for a short-order cook, Frankie's calculated loneliness is disrupted. Fueled by an attraction that becomes a mission - and driven by his half-joking belief that the classic oldie "Frankie and Johnny" (which charted for both Brook Benton and Sam Cooke) has prescribed their involvement - Johnny begins to pursue her tenaciously. She backs away, he draws closer, she sidesteps, he drops on one knee to plead. The courtship dance has begun.

Since the first rumors of this project circulated, critics have carped about the casting of Pfeiffer. How could one of the world's most beautiful women play a downtrodden diner waitress? How could Pfeiffer be expected to shed her luminous aura? But the problems presented by the low-rent nature of the character are less cosmetic than dispositional. Frankie's ambivalence toward her independence, the pain that accompanies her self-imposed exile from dating, these are emotions that Pfeiffer can act but not inhabit. There's a theory about Pfeiffer that holds that she's overcome the superficial spokesmodel casting of her early career (Falling in Love Again, Grease 2) so completely that she is now a performer of unequaled power and depth. That's simply not true, and the more complicated demands of playing this role prove it.

The savior, both for Pfeiffer and for the audience, is Pacino. Though he's clearly in the highest reaches of the Hollywood hierarchy, it's hard to think of another actor who has given excellent performances in mediocre movies with as much consistency. In Bobby Deerfield, in Author! Author!, even opposite Ellen Barkin in the truly awful Sea of Love, Pacino has brought his sunken features and rumpled charm to a variety of roles. And, unlike his contemporary, Robert Redford, Pacino's not the kind of hollowly enigmatic performer who is overwhelmed by powerful material. In 1990 Pacino merely gave the two best performances of the year, as the soul-sick Michael Corleone in Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather, Part III and the blustery Big Boy Caprice in Warren Beatty's Dick Tracy.

Here the seediness Pacino cultivated in Sea of Love is back in place, but in Johnny it's rendered entirely benign, even attractive. The first night after he's hired on at the Apollo, Johnny heads to midtown to buy himself a prostitute (no, not Julia Roberts). But he doesn't have sex with her; at his request, the two of them just sleep nestled together, an idea so innocent it's kinky. As he courts Frankie, Johnny behaves with the same mix of cockiness and loneliness. When she turns him down for a date, he shows up at the arranged time anyway. At work he assembles a makeshift rose from a celery stalk and a dyed potato.