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*** 1/2 “Patti Rocks.”

Virgin Vision. $79.95. 1988. R.

Twelve years after director David Burton Morris and actors Chris Mulkey and John Jenkins made “Loose Ends,” they reunite for a funny-melancholy update--a Molotov cocktail of all-male scatology. In it, Mulkey’s voracious Minnesota stud Billy entangles Jenkins’ pensive Eddie into a hapless escapade involving pregnant girlfriend Patti (Karen Landry)--during which, we learn, perhaps too automatically, the emptiness of machismo . The movie is loaded with scabrously accurate re-creations of buddies-together misogynistic jive, and it has a real feel for the isolation of the wintry Midwest. All the acting is good--in a Cassavetes-Eustache vein--and, as Billy, Mulkey really soars.