MOVIE REVIEW : Richter Serves Up a Bland ‘Dinner’

D. Richter did not exactly set the world on fire with “The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai,” his memorably wacky 1984 directorial debut, but he did manage to light a torch that a ragtag but resilient group of followers have been carrying ever since. Any day now, they said comfortingly to each other as year followed Richter-less year, he’ll direct another film, and won’t that be fun? Now, with “Late for Dinner,” the man has finally come up with another movie and, worse luck, it is hardly any fun at all.

An antic, off-center adventure spoof, “Banzai” captured its admirers with a fine display of the playful, kidding-on-the-square sensibility that also appeared in Richter’s earlier screenplays for “Slither” and “All Night Long.” While there are traces of his clever looniness in “Late for Dinner” (citywide), it certainly is slim pickings after a seven-year wait.

The film’s opening half hour, which walks the classic Richter line between funny and not funny, is promising enough. The year is 1962 and brothers-in-law Frank and Willie are on the lam. Willie (Brian Wimmer) is the one with a bullet in his body, Frank (Peter Berg) is the slightly weak-brained one with a bad kidney and a craving for Milk Duds.

At a stop in Pomona to scratch that itch, Frank’s doofy voice-over starts to tell us how the guys got into such a mess. Cut to back home in Santa Fe, where Willie and Frank ran afoul of a ruthless real estate hustler, a Donald Trump wanna-be (beautifully played by “sex, lies, and videotape’s” Peter Gallagher) who maneuvered them into a gun battle that was not their fault and possible jail terms.

With Willie, the nominal brains of the duo, passed out from lack of blood, Frank falls into the hands of the aptly named Dr. Dan Chillblains, and quicker than you can say “cryonics,” the two fugitives are zipped into absurd ice-cubed filled sleeping bags. “You’ll sleep one night,” Chillblains promises, “and everything will be different.”

To the surprise of no one but Willie and Frank, that single night’s sleep lasts 29 years, until a Rube Goldberg-type truck accident unfreezes them in 1991. At this point, where Mark Andrus’ script ought to begin in earnest, everything starts to fall apart.

Neither Andrus nor Richter has managed to make very much at all of the essential time-travel premise. Their concept of what will be unnerving about the future to these 1960s refugees is surprisingly pedestrian and tame.

Naturally, once Willie and Frank believe it is 1991, they go back to Santa Fe to compare notes with Joy (Marcia Gay Harden, the sizzling Verna of “Miller’s Crossing”), Willie’s wife and Frank’s sister. Not much imagination has gone into taking the implications of that rather outre situation very far beyond the obvious setups and resolution.

Once it heads into the home stretch, “Late for Dinner” has clearly opted for poignancy over outrageousness, for a wistful romantic tone that meditates on lost time and the persistence of love.

The problem, however, is not that Richter and Andrus have tried something new; it’s that they haven’t tried anything very hard. “Late for Dinner” (rated PG) does have its moments of both humor and romance, but mostly it is ordinary and dead flat. It does what Richter has not done before: take a potentially chaotic and liberating situation and play it safe. Like his heroes, something in Richter seems to have frozen up during that long wait between pictures.

‘Late for Dinner’

Brian Wimmer Willie Husband

Peter Berg Frank Lovegren

Marcia Gay Harden Joy Husband

Colleen Flynn Jessica Husband

Castle Rock Entertainment in association with New Line Cinema presentation, released by Columbia Pictures. Director W. D. Richter. Producers Dan Lupovitz, Richter. Screenplay Mark Andrus. Cinematographer Peter Sova. Editor Richard Chew, Robert Leighton. Costumes Aggie Guerard Rodgers. Music David Mansfield. Production design Lily Kilvert. Art director John Warnke. Set decorator Rosemary Brandenburg. Running time: 1 hour, 35 minutes.

MPAA-rated PG.