08/22/97
MOVIE REVIEW: Leave It To Beaver
The big-screen Beav is a disappointment

By JIM SEAVOR
Journal-Bulletin Arts Writer

** (out of five)
Starring Christopher McDonald, Janine Turner, Cameron Finley and Erik von Detten. A Universal Pictures release written by Brian Levant and Lon Diamond and directed by Andy Cadiff. Rated PG, extremely mild language. Running time: 92 minutes.

I'm really worried about the Beaver.

I'm pretty concerned about Hollywood, too.

Are explosions and retreads of old TV shows all the studios can turn out? Are they convinced that adults who reveled in sitcoms as kids have to get another fix? Isn't Nick at Nite enough?

Leave It To Beaver, which lasted on the tube from 1957 to 1963, is the latest sitcom to stumble onto the big screen. Once again, movie makers faced the question of how to deal with something so firmly rooted in the past. They did it well with the Brady Bunch by keeping the family in its own little world, wonderfully oblivious to what's been happening over the years.

This time around, the powers that be added a few references to such movies as The Lion King and tossed in computers as a nod to the present. But otherwise this Beaver is an old-time, low budget sitcom: cars still have fins; the streets are pretty much empty; and kids still go to the soda shop -- and actually buy a soda.

The difference is, back then you might have believed it. Even the actors back then seemed to believe it.

Leave it to Beaver does have a great opening. We're in Mayfield, Ohio, a world where the lawns are neatly cut and the streets are tree-lined. It's a world where everyone knows everyone else and the morning air is filled with shouted greetings from house to house.

Down the street come Wally Cleaver and his younger brother, Beaver. They're delivering the paper. Wally is pedaling his bike, Beaver is tossing the paper -- onto a roof, into wet cement -- in an increasingly slapstick series of catastrophies. He's a happy, innocent kid who makes Dennis the Menace seem tame.

The opening is fun. Then you have to sit through the rest of the movie.

There are a couple of plots going.

Beaver sees his dream bike in a store window. He wants that bike more than anything -- "even superpowers." On the advice of the nasty Eddie Haskell, Beaver signs up for the Mayfield Mighty Mites football team. (Don't ask how the diminutive Beaver would ever be allowed on the field.) He wants to make dad proud -- proud enough to give him that bike for his birthday.

He gets the bike, then loses it when it's stolen.

While Beaver is dealing with his problems, Wally is having some of his own -- mainly, he's beginning to date.

And you learn that the Cleaver clan is dysfunctional beneath its polished surface.

Believe me, that surface is really polished.

Janine Turner, of Northern Exposure fame, is practically unrecognizable as the perky, bright-eyed overly made-up June Cleaver, who still dresses up to vacuum. (The only nod to the present day is to have Ward Cleaver say, "You're vacuuming in pearls. You know what that does to me.") Ward is played by Christopher McDonald, Erik von Detten is older brother Wally and Adam Zolotin is the two-faced Eddie Haskell -- overly polite to adults, cruel to younger kids.

Everyone has the slightly smug air of people slumming. Except Cameron Finley as The Beaver. The kid's a natural. He's sweet without being syrupy. The Beaver is a good kid. You like him.

Even Barbara Billingsley, the original June Cleaver, turns up briefly as Aunt Martha, and Ken Osmond, the original Eddie, has a scene as this Eddie's dad. It's nice to see them again, but you wish it were under happier circumstances.

Screenwriters Brian Levant and Lon Diamond are just too caught up in the material. Levant was a director on The New Leave It To Beaver TV series, and he directed the film version of The Flintstones. Diamond also worked on The Flintstones, another dull film version of a TV series. They simply cannot lift the material out of its small-screen origins. Neither can director Andy Cadiff, who's making his feature film debut. He's best known as producer-director of Home Improvement.

Their version of Mayfield and the Beaver family is like a Disney main street. It looks real at first, then becomes more and more fake as you spend time there. The result is a film that's pleasant, but just barely.