MOVIE REVIEW : ‘HIP’ COMEDY SETS A BAD PRECEDENT

Sometimes the movie ads say it all. Take “From the Hip” (citywide), whose ads show Judd Nelson with a bone in his mouth, below the line: “Getting to the top means working like a dog.” Forget about how hard Nelson works playing hot-shot lawyer Robin (Stormy) Weathers. It’s the movie that’s a dog. In fact, it’s such an embarrassingly lame comedy that you could easily imagine some mischievous attorney filing suit--for defamation of the entire profession.

Right from the start, we have our doubts about Weathers. He’s the kind of guy who would wake up his girlfriend by scratching his fingers along a chalkboard two inches from her ear. Buried in the research department of a prestigious Boston law firm, Weathers is eager to get ahead--so eager that he stages a fake tirade over the phone, attracting enough attention from the stuffy partners that this ambitious hot-dog wins a shot at his first case.

Determined to make an impression, he launches into a noisy debate over the legal implications of a certain seven-letter obscenity, transforming the decorous courtroom into a three-ring circus. When his bonehead antics attract a media swarm, Weathers becomes the Rev. Gene Scott of defense lawyers, staging courtroom stunts, grandstanding interminably and generally making a spectacle of himself (He’s the kind of lawyer who quotes Fred Flintstone in his summation). As chaos mounts, the movie loses whatever ties it had with real legal ethics (one of the film’s many hastily sketched subplots) and degenerates into a hapless, sitcom style jokefest.

Director Bob Clark has apparently become obsessed with media-created wackos (his last film was the equally improbable “Turk 182”), but his aim is spectacle, not satire, and he crowds the film with hammy performances and silly plot twists. The film’s script was co-written by Clark and David Kelley, a former attorney who’s now a story editor with “L.A. Law.” Unfortunately, you’d never guess anyone associated with this film had a legal background--not when you see Weathers stomping around the courtroom, trying to wallop jurors with a murder weapon or plucking a vibrator from a prosecutor’s briefcase.

The film’s only bright moments are provided by Ray Walston as an exasperated judge and John Hurt as a delightfully elegant (but entirely mad) English professor up on a murder rap. If you enjoy horrible acting mismatches, watch for the scenes between Hurt and Judd Nelson, who has about as much chance holding his own opposite the regal Hurt as Spud Webb would have in the ring with Mike Tyson. Nelson specializes in playing obnoxious sore-heads, but he has none of the insouciant charm this role needs.

In fact, after seeing the film makers waste a sharp young actress like Elizabeth Perkins, who has the thankless task of portraying Weathers’ loyal girlfriend, you almost wish they’d traded places. With the razor-tongued wit she displayed in “About Last Night,” Perkins would have made a far more intriguing legal eagle than Nelson. As it stands, “From the Hip” (rated PG for occasional foul language) is the kind of ludicrous tale that would get laughed out of court--even “Night Court.”