Legal Eagles

Just when you thought that sophistication had vanished from the silver screen, along comes Legal Eagles to gladden the heart and charge the intellect. [16 July 1986]

A reasonably bright and original movie -- with enough good-natured star performances to make up for glitches in the screenplay, which never quite decides if it's more interested in laughs, chills, or romance.

It's a pleasant commercial undertaking, though everything about this $30-million production seems a bit overscaled: the stars are too big for their parts, the mystery subplot is too complicated to take a comfortable backseat to the romantic comedy, the special effects (which include two spectacular fires) are too big for the action, and even the wide-screen image is too big for the intimate, offhanded humor.

After the fires, explosions, chase scenes, shootouts, ambushes and dead bodies, the movie's human story seems sort of lonely and forlorn. Maybe there was some kind of satirical purpose in surrounding the people with so much activity. I dunno. But the extra ingredients make a potentially better movie into a confused, overloaded and disjointed one.

Though publicized as a breakthrough into adult comedy for Mr. Reitman (''National Lampoon's Animal House,'' ''Meatballs,'' ''Ghostbusters''), this new film is less a true adult comedy than a teen-age comedy populated by adults who are functioning in an adult world.

Everything seems to revolve around an art fraud, though that's never quite clear since this plot falls into the category kindly known as 'baggy'.

[An] inept, incoherent and charmless would-be romantic comedy-thriller.