MOVIE REVIEW : ‘HEARTBURN’S’ SLICK SOUFFLE

Watching director Mike Nichols’ “Heartburn” (selected theaters) is like having your pocket picked by Raffles himself: You can admire the audacity and the professionalism all you want, but you’ve still been robbed.

This is a rattlingly empty and surface film--which is not to say it doesn’t have individually delicious moments. How could it not, with Meryl Streep, Jack Nicholson, Stockard Channing, Richard Masur and Maureen Stapleton on the premises? Just recalling some of its high points can bring a daffy glow of pleasure hours later. But strung-together moments aren’t a movie; “Heartburn” is thin stuff from rich talents.

It’s missing even a point of view. As we watch Streep and Nicholson, a pair of snugly established writers, propel themselves into love (largely on the basis of her ability to whip up Spaghetti Carbonara at 4 a.m. at his place their first night together), then marriage, then parenthood, then infidelity, we don’t know what emotion director Mike Nichols is courting. A sense of loss? A twinge of identity? A sense of the futility of marriage today? A suspicion that journalists make lousy husbands?

(You might have trouble with the last since, word processor aside, Jack Nicholson never seems connected by so much as an editor or a phone call to any profession at all--much less that of a Washington columnist.)

Presumably Nora Ephron, “Heartburn’s” screenwriter, wrote the extremely slim book on which it was based in white heat--it was, after all, her side of the breakup of her marriage to Washington journalist Carl Bernstein (in the thinnest of disguises). The best things about the brittle and relentlessly in-groupy book were Ephron’s recipes--soothing food for the very, very, very thin or wretched, featuring cream, potatoes, rice, butter or a felicitous arrangement of all four.

The movie’s tone is gentled, but not deepened, and seen exclusively from one point of view (the wife’s). Presumably director Nichols felt that Ephron’s on-the-nose vignettes about upscale Washington life told us enough. If so, he misjudged. Her screenplay needs more ballast; it’s insubstantial as smoke. And the casting throws things out of whack.

Nicholson is far too strong a performer to be shunted off to the sidelines a little more than halfway through the film. Particularly when he’s been banished for infidelity and we have no more idea just why he strayed than his wife does. (Karen Akers is the reason.)

It’s at that halfway-plus mark that the film begins to unravel. Nichols has been able to divert us buoyantly enough until this point, with elements like Nestor Almendros’ rich and infinitely civilized camerawork or glimpses of a “smart” couple discovering the homey joys of parenthood.

Streep, in particular, is aglow with her love of her family-bounded life--it’s one of her loveliest characterizations. And Nicholson is mostly her match, crooning nonsense songs to his wife “Petunia,” celebrating the news of his impending fatherhood with a medley of songs with “baby” in them. (Other times he’s way overboard: for example, using his “Prizzi’s Honor” Charley Partanna-face to denote stupefaction at even the sound of the marriage service.)

You can fret at “Heartburn’s” flimsiness, may even find it insufferably smug in its portrait of “our set,” but you probably won’t be bored by it. And it is peopled with adults, these days enough to make you whimper in gratitude. If only these talents were in the service of something.

A running gag threads through the movie: a surreal experience Streep has while watching “Masterpiece Theatre” (John Wood in a devilishly sly Alistair Cooke send-up). Seeing how well these segments worked, perhaps they should have used the recipes onscreen too. It couldn’t hurt.

‘HEARTBURN’ A Paramount Pictures release. Producers Mike Nichols, Robert Greenhut. Director Nichols. Screenplay Nora Ephron, based on her novel. Camera Nestor Almendros. Production design Tony Walton. Costumes Ann Roth. Editor Sam O’Steen. Music Carly Simon. Art director John Kasarda, set decorator Susan Bode. Sound James Sabat. With Meryl Streep, Jack Nicholson, Jeff Daniels, Maureen Stapleton, Stockard Channing, Richard Masur, Catherine O’Hara, Steven Hill, Milos Forman, Natalie Stern, Karen Akers.

Running time: 1 hour, 48 minutes.

MPAA-rated: R (persons under 17 must be accompanied by parent or adult guardian).