MOVIE REVIEW : ‘Brenda Starr’ Comic Strip Spoof Misfires

“Brenda Starr” (citywide) arrives after some five years of legal disputes over distribution rights. It would have been an act of kindness for all concerned, including the paying customer, to have left it on the shelf where it belongs.

Under Robert Ellis Miller’s direction Brooke Shields is a saucy, fearless if naive Brenda, the auburn-haired reporter-heroine of Dale Messick’s long-running comic strip, and Timothy Dalton is apt casting as dashing Basil St. John, the mystery man with the signature black orchids who beguiles Starr. As game as Shields is, she’s easily outacted by the always formidable Diana Scarwid as lacquered rival reporter Libby (Lips) Lipscomb.

The villain of the film’s Cold War plot is a terrible script with inane dialogue. It has a silly fantasy framing story (which ill serves Tony Peck as a comic-strip illustrator smitten with Brenda) and has Starr chasing over Puerto Rico and Brazil in search of a Nazi scientist (Henry Gibson) with a secret formula for turning water into a fuel so potent that it will facilitate space travel. It’s 1948, and it’s important that we get our hands on that formula before the Russkies do--and that Starr get the scoop needed to save her ailing paper, the Flash.

It requires a great deal of inspiration and imagination to sustain a spoof for 94 minutes, and “Brenda Starr” (rated PG), which could use some of that magic fuel itself, runs out of gas around the first half-hour mark, lapsing into an ever-increasing tedium. In any event, there’s just not a lot of point to the film. The opportunity to present in witty, subtle fashion Brenda as a pioneer feminist (instead of as an airhead, as she is here)--and thereby gain some substance and relevance--has been missed completely, and the film simply does not have the budget to compete in style and sophistication with “Dick Tracy,” which itself was an instance of more icing than cake.

The one consistent plus throughout the film is Brenda’s lavish, gaudy high ‘40s wardrobe, designed knowingly by Bob Mackie. While it’s true that the New Look had arrived from Paris by 1948 it’s nevertheless fun to see Brenda a la Betty Grable in the cartwheel hats, spectator pumps and peplums of the World War II era.

‘Brenda Starr’

Brooke Shields: Brenda Starr

Timothy Dalton: Basil St. John

Tony Peck: Mike Randall

Diana Scarwid: Libby (Lips) Lipscomb

A Triumph release of an AM/PM production. Director Robert Ellis Miller. Producer Myron A. Hyman. Executive producers John D. Backe, Alana H. Lambros. Screenplay Noreen Stone & James David Buchanan and Jenny Wolkind. Cinematographer Freddie Francis. Editor Mark Melnick. Costumes Peggy Farrell; Brooke Shields’ costumes by Bob Mackie. Music Johnny Mandel. Production design John J. Lloyd. Running time: 1 hour, 34 minutes.

MPAA-rated PG (some minor violence).