12/12/97
MOVIE REVIEW: For Richer or Poorer
Amish country comedy is minimalist on laughs

By MICHAEL JANUSONIS
Journal-Bulletin Arts Writer

**1/2 (out of five)
Starring Tim Allen, Kirstie Alley, Jay O. Sanders, Michael Lerner, Wayne Knight. A Universal picture written by Jana Howington and Steve Lukanic, directed by Bryan Spicer. Rated PG-13, contains adult themes, profanity. Running time: 115 minutes.

For Richer or Poorer is, for better or worse, a one-joke movie, although Tim Allen and Kirstie Alley gamely carry it off in broad farcical style.

They play a rich New York couple with a big bank account and a disintegrating marriage who leave town in a hurry because their embezzling accountant has messed up their finances and the Internal Revenue Service has charged them with tax fraud.

Fleeing in a stolen taxicab, they reach the end of the line in Intercourse, Pa. -- Amish country -- where they masquerade as a visiting Amish couple from Missouri.

Soon they're milking cows, slopping hogs, plowing fields behind a great big horse, collecting eggs, quilting and dining on liver, kidney and lung casserole. Of course in a comedy that's played for slapstick, it means that Alley's Caroline Sexton will fall into the mud with the pigs and Allen's Brad will be dragged across the fields by that great big horse.

Despite almost nonstop vignettes aiming to provoke bellylaughs, the results are mostly just cheerful because we know ahead of time exactly what we're being set up for by director Bryan Spicer, whose last film was the quickly sunk McHale's Navy.

Unsurprisingly, the Sextons are changed for the better by their back-to-the-land experiences. All that milking and slopping and watching the younguns fall in love heals their marriage, too. Oh, if life were only this simple.

And the Amish will never be quite the same either. Not with Caroline prodding the womenfolk to forsake their drab black and gray garb in favor of pastels. The Amish would surely hate this movie -- made in Maryland rather than Pennsylvania -- if they went to the movies.