Green Acres

Yes, the technology's performance is a predictable success: The ample screen reproduces - and basks in - one lovely projected image after another. The DeLuxe color, like the photography by Mikael Salomon, is variously splendid. Rarely have movie locations (in this instance, the translucent west coast of Ireland and Billings, Montana) been lavished upon so utterly or been framed with more picture-postcard prettiness. And in the darkness of a movie theater, Cruise and Kidman could not emerge with more beatific comeliness.

All of which is small consolation in a film that, far and away, is one of the most spectacularly slow-witted and inane epic spectacles committed to any screen - wide, regular, or otherwise.

FAR AND AWAY
Directed by Ron Howard; written by Bob Dolman; with Tom Cruise, Nicole Kidman, Thomas Gibson, Robert Prosky, Barbara Babcock, Eileen Pollock, Michelle Johnson, and Cyril Cusack.

Rated PG-13.
Opens Friday.