MOVIE REVIEW : FOOLISH ACT OF TURNING ‘PROOF’ INTO ‘FANDANGO’

“Fandango” (citywide) means, among other things, “a foolish act.” The title refers to a spree that five college youths embark upon in the summer of ’71 as the specter of the Vietnam War closes in on them. Unfortunately, a foolish act succinctly describes the film itself.

Expanded--at the suggestion of Steven Spielberg, no less, for his Amblin Films--by USC cinema alumnus Kevin Reynolds from his well-received short called “Proof,” “Fandango” overreaches badly and sinks under a heavy weight of symbolism, bathos and sheer preposterousness that no amount of humor and incident can redeem. Alas, “Fandango” sparks unwanted memories of Arthur Penn’s ill-fated, overheated “Four Friends.”

When draft notices start arriving simultaneously with diplomas at a Texas university, handsome daredevil Kevin Costner rounds up four special pals (Judd Nelson, Sam Robards, Chuck Bush, Brian Cesak), piles them into Nelson’s ’59 Caddie and hits the road for a final round of fun and adventure. Since the locale is the vast Texas nothingness, it’s amazing that anything happens to them at all, outside of car trouble. (They lasso the out-of-gas Caddie to a passing freight train, which merely results in a lost front end, replaced incongruously in some tank town by what looks to be vintage Plymouth parts.)

There’s a wistful stopover at the crumbling “Giant” set, and a romp in a small-town cemetery involving the setting off of a vast supply of firecrackers, allowing the tombstones to be silhouetted against fiery skies, which is about as literal a foreshadowing as you can get of what lies ahead for them in Vietnam.

The key episode involves a stoned ex-Vietnam pilot (Marvin J. McIntyre, a woozy delight) who runs a parachuting school (of sorts) in a vast, ruined hangar in the middle of nowhere. Costner and the up-tight, gung-ho Nelson have begun to clash seriously, with ROTC Nelson proving his manhood by parachuting from McIntyre’s ramshackle psychedelic plane.

Although overly long, this sequence, alternately funny and scary, is the only well-sustained section in the picture, perhaps because it was at the heart of Reynolds’ short film. In McIntyre and his hippie lady (Glenne Headly) Reynolds does manage some amusing satire of the flower-child mentality. (Still, it’s hard to laugh when from the start we’re worrying whether Cesak is only passed out, or dead.) Too bad Reynolds didn’t quit while he was ahead; instead he goes for an all-out soggy, sentimental finish.

Reynolds’ key actors are talented enough and young enough to survive this debacle. In his first starring role, Costner, who has a classic presence, is a genuine discovery. (He was cast as the suicide in “The Big Chill,” but his part wound up on the cutting-room floor.) By the end of “Fandango” (rated PG for mild raunchiness) there is one thing for which we can be grateful: Reynolds resists the by-now-cliched crawl telling us what happened to his five friends in Vietnam or elsewhere. But that’s about all he resists.