MOVIE REVIEW : Bud Cort Is an Obsessed Pursuer in ‘Ted & Venus’

The producer of “Ted & Venus” (at the Royal) has called it the “spiritual sequel” of “Harold and Maude.” Ironically, Bud Cort was as appealing in that the milestone comedy as he is repellent in this film, which suffers seriously from a discernible point of view--and which also marks his directorial debut.

He casts himself as Ted, a talentless and literally crazed poet who is transfixed by a beautiful young woman (talented Kim Adams, in her film debut) as she emerges from the ocean at Venice Beach. For Ted she is a vision as awesome as Botticelli’s “Venus on a Half Shell.”

Eventually he finds a way to meet her, and amazingly, she is impressed with his poetry to the extent that he mistakenly assumes he has a chance with her. He becomes so obsessed by her that he turns her life into a nightmare, wrecking her romance with another man and making her fear for her life. What starts out as a deceptively sweet and quirky little movie lapses rapidly into a morbid ordeal, yet it’s unclear how we are to view this drastic shift in tone.

A formidable actor, Cort spares us nothing in the way of depicting quite convincingly Ted’s increasingly disturbed behavior, yet he apparently expects us to empathize with Ted, even more than with his victim. You may well feel that Ted is in desperate need of far better help than society provides him, yet still believe emphatically that he needs to be taken out of circulation because of the danger he presents to Linda, a normal, perfectly nice young woman.

Throwing himself wholeheartedly into this project on both sides of the camera, Cort clearly wants to evoke pathos in regard to Ted’s eventual fate, but at the film’s finish it’s hard to feel more than a decided sense of relief.

“Ted & Venus,” which boasts an enormous name cast--cameos by seemingly everyone Cort has ever known or worked with--includes a fine turn by James Brolin as Ted’s laid-back artist pal. As Ted meets his destiny, Watergate is unfolding, but it’s hard to see a connection between Ted and Richard M. Nixon. The R-rated film does work up considerable sentiment for victims’ rights, which may not be what Cort and his co-writer, Paul Ciotti, primarily had in mind.

‘Ted & Venus’

Bud Cort: Ted Whitley

James Brolin: Max Waters

Kim Adams: Linda Turner

Carol Kane: Colette

A Double Helix release of a Krishna Shah presentation of an L.A. Dreams presentation. Director Bud Cort. Producers Randolf Turrow, William Talmadge. Executive producer Randall Kubota. Screenplay Paul Ciotti, Cort. Cinematographer Dietrich Lohmann. Editor Katina Zinner. Costumes Rosemarie Fall, Dana Weems. Music David Robbins. Production design Lynn Christopher. Art director Robert Stover. Set decorator Gene Serdena. Sound Lee Orloff. Running time: 1 hour, 36 minutes.

MPAA-rated R.