MOVIE REVIEWS : ‘American Blue Note’ Not Jazzy Enough

The operative word for “American Blue Note” (at Laemmle’s Monica 4-Plex) is mild . Set in the early ‘60s, this “Diner”-style drama about a bunch of guys in a jazz quintet never threatens to become exciting, but it doesn’t try to make a “statement” either.

Jack Solow (Peter MacNicol), the quintet’s leader, is a nebbishy nice guy whose high aspirations for his musicians don’t jibe with the crummy joints he regularly books them into. The director Ralph Toporoff, working from a script by Gilbert Girion, shows us a few of these auditions, and their dull sameness is funny.

Toporoff captures in these set pieces the mixture of exasperation, mock humility and over-eagerness that marks the audition process. And because the Jack Solow Quintet is supposed to be second-rate anyway, their eagerness has a forlorn quality. These guys are knocking themselves out for nothing, and yet their pleasure in their music carries them through the blahs.

If the movie had really explored the way music unified the jazzmen’s lives, it might have found its subject. Instead, it putters along, and Toporoff has an unfortunate tendency to linger far too long on scenes of no great moment. (You want to cry out: “Move the camera .”) MacNicol gives a sweet, unaffected performance, but his character isn’t written with any depth; when he overcomes his shyness enough to ask out a dancer (Charlotte d’Amboise), the experience of being with her doesn’t deepen him in any way. His shyness, instead of being a resonant character trait, is employed as shtick.

One of the jillion reasons this film (rated PG-13) isn’t as good as “Diner” is because it’s too self-satisfied with itself for being benign, as if that were a proof of its sincerity. It’s so genial it floats away.

Currently playing on the same bill with “American Blue Note” is “Mother, Mother,” a 35-minute drama directed by Micki Dickoff about a young man (John Dye) with AIDS and the mother (Polly Bergen) who has rejected him for his homosexuality. Also prominent in the cast are Bess Armstrong and Piper Laurie, playing the mother of Dye’s deceased lover.

Earnest, dutiful, plodding, it has the look and feel of an inspirational TV problem drama. The currency of this particular problem gives it an immediacy that, as in a confrontation scene between Bergen and Laurie, sometimes lifts the film out of its class.

‘American Blue Note’

Peter MacNicol: Jack

Carl Capotorto: Jerry

Tim Guinee: Bobby

Charlotte d’Amboise: Benita

A Vested Interests production released by Panorama Entertainment. Director Ralph Toporoff. Producer Ralph Toporoff. Screenplay Gilbert Girion. Cinematographer Joey Forsyte. Editor Jack Haigis. Costumes Nina Canter. Music Larry Schanker. Production design Charles Lagola. Art director Katharine Frederick. Running time: 1 hour, 36 minutes.

MPAA-rated PG-13.