STAGE REVIEW : ‘Reel Music’ Has Some Reel Fun : Saddleback College’s revue presents several time-honored film scores along with a handful of surprises, including refreshing jabs at Hollywood’s excesses.

It’s impossible for anyone who loves the movies not to feel stirred when the lights go out and the memories turn on in “Blame It on the Movies: The Reel Music of Hollywood,” at Saddleback College through Aug. 11.

This revue--which includes standards from “As Time Goes By” to the theme from “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly,” not to mention a snippet from the shrieking “Psycho” score--isn’t just an exercise in nostalgia, though. It would rate four stars for its thoroughly slick delivery alone.

The first in Saddleback’s professional Summer Stock series, it features a cast of seven on a small stage adorned with swirling film strips, one of which cleverly encircles a spiral staircase. The only props: six movable theater seats, put to ingenious use.

For “Mule Train,” the theater seats become a stagecoach, which one of the performers pulls. For that teary teen lament “Town Without Pity,” they become motorcycles. Laurrinda Robinson plays a movie usher who delivers specially written introductions to the songs, and sings a few of them herself.

Equally nifty: The audience sits at small nightclubby tables that come in handy during intermission for such special deserts as Goldfinger Lemon Torte and Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad Milkyway Cake ($2.75 a pop).

Along with the time-honored movie music we love--tunes such as “Love Is a Many Splendored Thing” and “You’ll Never Know”--”Blame It on the Movies” dusts off some surprises. Anyone remember “Milkman, Keep Those Bottles Quiet” (from 1944’s “Broadway Rhythm”) or “Arthur Murray Taught Me Dancing in a Hurry” (from 1942’s “The Fleet’s In”)? And what about songs that didn’t win the Oscar?

Equally refreshing are some well-deserved jabs at Hollywood excess, including such musical bombs as “Xanadu” and even Sally Field’s gushing Oscar acceptance speech.

Under Beth Hansen’s direction, “Blame It on the Movies” is as much fun as a Saturday matinee--thanks, in large part, to a cast that’s so in sync (with the lyrics, as well as one another) that we could all but swear they’ve been doing this show for ages.

‘BLAME IT ON THE MOVIES: THE REEL MUSIC OF HOLLYWOOD’

A Saddleback College Summer Stock production. Original music and lyrics by Billy Barnes. Directed by Beth Hansen. Choreography by Susan Cable. Scenic design by Wally Huntoon. Costume/makeup design by Charles Castagno. Lighting/sound design by Kevin Cook. With Carole Best, Dexter Echiverri, Christine Hewitt, Jeff Paul, Lisa Richard, Laurrinda Robinson and Mark Wickham. Pianist: Gare Mattison. Percussionist: Randy Woltz. At the Cabaret Theatre, 28000 Marguerite Parkway, Mission Viejo, Wednesdays through Saturdays at 8:30 p.m., Sundays at 7:30 p.m., with Saturday and Sunday matinees at 3:30, through Aug. 11. Tickets: $10-$14. Information: (714) 582-4656.