MOVIE REVIEW : A Rather Mild Dose of ‘Love Potion’

“Love Potion 9” (citywide) is yet another movie that doesn’t live up to a title lifted from a pop standard, in this instance the often revived 1959 Jerry Leiber-Mike Stoller hit. It’s also yet another romantic comedy that turns upon a belabored gimmick, this time a potion that makes you irresistible to the opposite sex. “Love Potion 9” isn’t truly terrible, like the recent “Frozen Assets.” It even provokes some laughs, but it suffers from terminal mildness.

Tate Donovan stars as a pleasant-looking but overly shy and lonely young biochemist who turns for help to a Gypsy fortune-teller (Anne Bancroft, underplaying in a fine cameo) who entrusts him with one of her magic elixirs. His coat pockets crammed with condoms--hey, this is 1992--he’s soon having his way with the entire membership of a college sorority. However, he is after all a scientist, and he feels that he and his co-worker, a drab comparative psychobiologist (Sandra Bullock) ought to test the stuff on themselves in a methodical manner. Unfortunately, Donovan and Bullock aren’t vivid presences even after they’re supposedly transformed by the potion.

It doesn’t take Bancroft’s crystal ball to tell you that minus some ugly glasses and a hint of a mustache--and plus a new hairstyle and wardrobe--Bullock could be quite attractive and soon will be.

It’s so obvious that Donovan and Bullock are destined to wind up in a fade-out clinch that it’s hard to pay much attention to the getting there--all those myriad complications, caused by that elixir and its equally tricky antidote, that are just temporary obstacles on the path to true love. It might have been nice to see these two nerds slowly discovering each other minus the gimmickry; it’s rather sad, surely not an intended effect, to realize that they would never have gotten together if it weren’t for a fantasy device, the love potion, no matter how much trouble it stirs up.

“Love Potion 9” (rated PG-13 for considerable sexual innuendo), which marks the directorial debut of producer-writer Dale Launer, is surprisingly bland and slack to have been made by the man who wrote such zesty comedies as “Ruthless People,” “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels” and “My Cousin Vinny.” It’s all too clear in wearing three hats Launer has spread himself too thin.

‘Love Potion 9’

Tate Donovan: Paul

Sandra Bullock: Diane

Anne Bancroft: Madame Ruth

Dale Midkiff: Gary

A 20th Century Fox presentation. Writer-producer-director Dale Launer. Executive producer Thomas M. Hammel. Cinematographer William Wages. Editor Suzanne Pettit. Costumes Timothy D’Arcy. Music Jed Leiber. Production design Linda Pearl. Art director Thomas Minton. Set decorator Sally Nicolaou. Sound Jim Hawkins. Running time: 1 hour, 35 minutes.

MPAA-rated PG-13 (considerable sexual innuendo).