THE GRASS HARP (13)

Directed by: Charles Matthau

Starring: Edward Furlong, Piper Laurie, Sissy Spacek, Walter Matthau, Jack Lemmon

The Pitch: An orphaned boy goes to live with his two maiden aunts - one severe and materialistic, the other fey and Nature-loving - in a small Southern town.

Theo Sez: Outcasts band together, but the result is more ANTONIA'S LINE than BOOGIE NIGHTS - even worse, in fact, for it doesn't even have any ideological point. It's the most hackneyed kind of made-for-TV movie, from its opening dewy-eyed voice-over to the hilariously dreadful final scene in which our young hero, leaving town to make his way in the world, is accosted in turn by each of the various townspeople en route to the station, each one repeating his particular catchphrase and giving him Good Advice in appropriate style (so that, e.g. the town cop says "Don't you get into any trouble now, or I'll come up there and arrest you") : it's mind-boggling. Except of course that it isn't a made-for-TV movie but a fairly prestigious picture featuring a cast who've amassed five Oscars between them - and who, inevitably, manage on occasion to energise the material (Lemmon, as a fast-talking slicker, is especially effective) ; those wondering how such a drab, witless script could've attracted such stellar performers should note the director's surname - and spare a thought for all the aspiring film-makers who can't even get their work read because they don't have the connections. Nepotism at its most despicable, though it is the easy winner of the year's Most Ridiculous Aphorism award : "Love is a chain of love, just like Nature is a chain of life."