MOVIE REVIEW : 1992 Isn’t a Vintage Year for Flair, Wit in ‘Comet’

There are a great many things one can fake in the movies, but panache isn’t one of them. You can’t cook up flair and wit the way you can cook up, say, sex and violence. It’s all a matter of style, and real style in the movies is always at a premium because it’s so personal . The great romantic comedies are intensely self-contained universes; it’s their intensity that makes them so romantic and so funny. They make ardor seem both irresistibly comic and unquenchably sexy.

“Year of the Comet” (citywide), directed by Peter Yates and scripted by William Goldman, is a pastiche of half-remembered moments from sundry celebrated romantic comedies and thrillers ranging from Hitchcock’s “The 39 Steps” to “The African Queen.” The borrowings leave a recycled aftertaste. (Hand-me-down stylishness always does.)

The plot is one of those kiss-and-chase affairs where everything is a pretext for a romance that never takes flight anyway. Penelope Ann Miller, in another of her prim-on-the-outside / vixen-on-the-inside roles, plays the daughter of a distinguished London wine merchant whose discovery of a bottle of the world’s rarest wine--Lafitte 1811--leads her into a merry chase from the fog banks of Scotland to the South of France. (Wine merchants apparently refer to 1811 as the best year ever for vintages: the Year of the Comet.) Accompanying her is the handsome rake (Timothy Daly), who is supposed to wend the huge, cobwebby bottle back to safety.

We know this guy’s a boor because he prefers Budweiser to vin rouge. But we’re also supposed to support his boorishness as being quintessentially and raffishly American. No wine snob he! To rub it in, the most debonair guy in the film (rated PG-13) is a swatch of effete smarm played by Louis Jourdan. Jourdan, probably not by design, gives the only entertaining performance in the movie.

The Scottish locations are ravishing, and so are the glimpses of Nice. Is it possible this is one of those movies that was made so that the filmmakers could spend time in those locations? The film’s travelogue aspects backfire: We stare at the screen and wish we were luxuriating in those locations instead of watching this dumb movie.

Don’t see the film; see your travel agent.

‘Year of the Comet’

Penelope Ann Miller: Maggie Harwood

Timothy Daly: Oliver Plexico

Louis Jourdan: Philippe

A Castle Rock Entertainment production in association with New Line Cinema. Director Peter Yates. Producer Peter Yates. Executive producers Phil Kellogg and Alan Brown. Screenplay by William Goldman. Cinematographer Roger Pratt. Editor Ray Lovejoy. Costumes Marilyn Vance-Straker. Music Hummie Mann. Production design Anthony Pratt. Art directors Desmond Crowe and Chris Seagers. Set decorator Stephanie McMillan. Running time: 1 hour, 40 minutes.

MPAA-rated PG-13.