TURN-ONS AND TURN-OFFS IN CURRENT HOME ENTERTAINMENT RELEASES : Excellent Good Fair Poor : VIDEOCASSETTES

“The Music Man.” Warner. $24.98. While one may grumble at a few saggy spots, a couple of below-par songs and the ultimate message--that our lives are better off with con men than without them!--everything else about this splashy, 151-minute 1962 musical is as irresistible as the charm of Robert Preston’s trickster-with-a-heart-of-gold band-instrument salesman. As with “Auntie Mame,” Morton da Costa moved his director’s chair from Broadway to Hollywood with sparkling cinematic results. The fantasy Americana of turn-of-the-century Iowa is lovingly evoked, then devastatingly kidded, and Meredith Willson’s rousing score includes “76 Trombones” and “Till There Was You.” 1/2