SHORT TAKES : Ebert Unravels Cruise Formula

Perhaps Roger Ebert should be making movies instead of critiquing them.

In this weekend’s edition of “Siskel & Ebert,” Ebert says he’s figured out the formula for making a Tom Cruise box-office hit along the lines of “Days of Thunder,” “Cocktail,” “The Color of Money” or “Top Gun.”

The elements are Cruise playing a boyish and naive, yet talented and spirited, character; a mentor (such as Paul Newman in “The Color of Money” or Tom Skerritt in “Top Gun”); a woman who’s taller and more mature than the Cruise character (Kelly McGillis in “Top Gun”); a craft that Cruise must master (pool hustling, cocktail mixing); the arena (a pool hall, a race track); the arcane knowledge that goes with the craft, and the trail that leads to where the masters practice their craft (the Caribbean in “Cocktail,” Daytona in “Thunder”).

And don’t forget the proto-enemy who at first is a rival but becomes an ally (Michael Rooker in “Thunder”); the eventual enemy who surfaces toward the end of the movie (Cary Elwes in “Thunder”) and the friend who dies, which Ebert says is the price of being Cruise’s best friend in a movie.