When Laughter Is Not Enough . . . : Disney’s New Film Lineup Exploring More Adult Themes

“There are funny things in this movie, too,” a studio representative assured the audience as they filed into their seats for a recent preview of Bette Midler’s newest film, “Beaches.” “If you see something funny, don’t be afraid to laugh.”

When Walt Disney Pictures, masters of the modern movie comedy, starts assuring viewers that it’s OK to laugh, you can be certain there’s change in the air.

The change, more to the point, is in the coming lineup of movies from Disney’s adult-film division Touchstone Pictures. Suddenly, the label best known for such adult comedies as “Down and Out in Beverly Hills” and “Ruthless People” is coming out with a slew of heavy dramas exploring complex adult themes, often with strong appeal to female audiences. Despite Disney’s opening assurance at the “Beaches” screening, the audience that night did as much crying as laughing.

Perhaps even more surprising than casting its star comedienne in a sentimental story was Disney’s decision to produce “The Good Mother,” which opens Friday. The drama, based on Sue Miller’s controversial 1986 novel and starring Diane Keaton, exposes its audience to the delicate subject of family sexuality.

And next summer, the studio plans to release two other heavy dramas. Australian film maker Peter Weir (“Witness,” “The Year of Living Dangerously”) will direct Robin Williams in “The Dead Poet Society.” In that film, Williams plays a controversial professor at a boy’s military school who inspires creativity in his young charges.

Also to be released next summer is “Hard Rain,” an action-thriller starring Tom Selleck. Last seen in the Disney/Touchstone comedy “Three Men and a Baby,” Selleck will play an innocent man sent to prison. Carroll Ballard (“The Black Stallion”) directs.

Looking ahead to Christmas 1989, Touchstone is planning to release “Blaze” a romantic melodrama in which Paul Newman stars and Ron Shelton (“Bull Durham”) directs. Also in the works is “Stella,” in which Bette Midler plays a mother who sacrifices everything for her child. It has not yet been scheduled.

Disney officials insist there is no conscious effort under way to alter Touchstone’s strategy at the box office. “The only thing you can fairly observe is that the mix keeps changing,” said Jeffrey Katzenberg, chairman of The Walt Disney Studios. “That is the ambition, the goal.” Katzenberg noted that it is not unprecedented for Touchstone to release adult-focused dramas, “The Color of Money” being a recent example.

Moreover, the new mix of films doesn’t mean Disney is dumping the comedy and animation formulas that have underpinned its wild success at the box office. “Ernest Saves Christmas” will open soon under the Touchstone label for the holidays. And Touchstone’s 1989 summer lineup includes a comedy starring Tom Hanks and a dog, “Turner and Hooch,” as well as Rick Moranis in “Honey, I’ve Shrunk the Kids.”

But there is a clear temperature change at Disney, one that draws both praise and concern about its financial future. “‘There was some risk in sticking to an all-comedy format--there’s more to the marketplace than that,” said Mara Miesnieks Balsbaugh, an entertainment stock analyst at Smith Barney. “Just because the public likes these adult comedies this year doesn’t mean they will next.”

However, Balsbaugh added, “the question comes to mind: How commercial can (these dramas) be? The odds of commercial success are probably lower. I’m less enthusiastic about the coming year’s slate of movies than last year’s slate.”

But box-office receipts may not be the only issue on the minds of Disney executives these days. One key agent, who declines to be identified, suggests that Disney’s strategy is meant to avoid a repeat of last year’s Oscar-season embarrassment, when Robin Williams’ (for best actor) received the studio’s only Academy Awards nomination.

“What Disney would like to do now is get a couple of Academy Awards,” says the agent. “ ‘Cocktail’ did great. But they’d like to get some critical notoriety, so it’s not just money, money, money when people think of them.”

Both “The Good Mother” and “Beaches” are likely to draw some of that critical notoriety. Already, Diane Keaton’s performance in “The Good Mother” has prompted speculation about an Oscar nomination.

Keaton stars as the divorced mother whose new-found sexual liberation with an Irish sculptor (Liam Neeson) provokes her straight-laced ex-husband to launch a custody battle for her 6-year-old daughter. The husband (James Naughton) accuses Keaton’s lover of molesting the little girl, but bases that charge on an incident that both Keaton and her lover consider quite innocent.

Director Leonard Nimoy, who also made “Three Men and a Baby,” says he intended to pose questions with no easy answers. “I tried to create an atmosphere of complexity, to close any doors that would make it easy,” the director said. He likens the film’s scenes to a Rorschach Test, in which the people can see very different patterns in the same inkblot.

Reviewers are already predicting that the film will provoke controversy among its audience.

But whether “The Good Mother” will be a commercial success is anyone’s guess. “Most exhibitors think it won’t do business,” said John Krier, president of Exhibitor Relations Co., which provides box office figures to theater owners. “I think this is a subject that the family doesn’t want to think about.” But Krier notes that no one predicted last year’s “Fatal Attraction” would be a hit either.

“Beaches” seems certain to stand apart from a pack of broad Christmas comedies that will include Paramount’s “The Naked Gun,” Universal’s “Twins,” and Orion’s “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels.”

Directed by Garry Marshall (“Overboard,” “The Flamingo Kid”), “Beaches” follows the ups and downs of a lifelong friendship between two hopelessly mismatched women. One is a brassy-but-insecure Broadway songstress played by Bette Midler, the other a blue-blooded San Franciscan, played by Barbara Hershey, who can never quite leave her prim and proper roots behind.

Intensely sentimental, the film is being privately tagged by Disney marketers as the next “Terms of Endearment.”

Disney is not the only studio betting on sentiment this Christmas--Fox is weighing in with “Working Girl,” directed by Mike Nichols and starring Harrison Ford and Sigourney Weaver; and Warner Bros., is releasing “Accidental Tourist,” directed by Lawrence Kasdan and starring William Hurt and Kathleen Turner.

But “Beaches” may be the riskiest of the three, because it dwells heavily on the special pangs and rewards of female friendship, while soft-pedaling its male lead, Midler’s theatrical producer-husband, played by John Hurt.

The film does have plenty of funny moments--but Disney insiders are obviously aware that they are treading on new emotional ground with the movie. “Get out your handkerchiefs,” one high Disney executive warned in advance of the recent screening.