9.1.99 00:08:21
Outstanding 'Outside Providence'

By MICHAEL JANUSONIS
Journal Arts Writer

Movie credits and rating

Michael Corrente's version of Peter Farrelly's Outside Providence is a terrifically entertaining coming-of-age movie that brims with goofy laughs, sweet romance, wacky situations and strong performances -- especially from Alec Baldwin and Trinity Rep's Tim Crowe.

Set in 1974, it's the story of Tim Dunphy (Shawn Hatosy), whose low expectations for the future are only surpassed by the low expectations of his buddies. They spend most of their free time hanging out together, getting high on pot and beer while commiserating in the miserableness of their lives.

These junior losers don't realize it yet, but they're well on their way to becoming -- albeit 25 years down the road -- just like Tim's father and his friends, who spend their nights sitting around a kitchen table drinking beer and playing poker.

The elder Dunphy (Alec Baldwin), known as the Old Man, is a blue-collar widower who has tried to raise his two sons as best he can, but clearly is losing the battle. This is not a man who can show much outward emotion toward either of his sons. The other son is Jackie (Tommy Bone), who has been confined to a wheelchair since falling off a roof during a touch football game. (It's the offbeat qualities of the writing that push Outside Providence into its endearingly giddy goofiness.)

The Old Man's nickname for Tim is ''Dildo,'' an indication of the lack of respect he shows his son. The Old Man doesn't do much more than hope for the best when Tim is out carousing with his pals. He's still naive enough to believe that a water pipe used for marijuana smoking is really a musical instrument.

That all changes when the pot-high Tim slams the family car into the back of a police cruiser.

Soon Tim has been packed off to a tony prep school in the hills of Connecticut, where the staff seems to be straight out of a 19th-century workhouse. But while the students may be better dressed than Tim's friends back in Pawtucket, they're just as ''high''-minded.

Crowe plays Tim's dorm master, A. E. Funderburk, with the kind of nasty glee he honed so well as Ebenezer Scrooge (before the Christmas Eve changeover) in productions at Trinity and makes a hissably venal, small-minded character. (What with former Trinity mainstays George Martin, Richard Jenkins and Amy Van Nostrand also in the cast, Outside Providence sometimes feels like a Trinity alumnae convention.)

The best thing about Outside Providence, besides its strong storyline, are characters who are rich enough that the actors have room to roam around in them and expand on them. What could have been an incidental figure planted for laughs -- Tim's frizzy-haired, horn-rimmed roommate, Irving Waltham (Jack Ferver) -- becomes a sensitive misfit who is frustrated at love and wins our hearts by desperately trying to find his place in Cornwall's pecking order.

There's a sweet romance created between Tim and the fresh-faced girl of his dreams, Jane Weston (Amy Smart), a moneyed WASP princess from Virginia who's headed for Brown University, but who proves to be just as game for a good time as Tim. Their Romeo-Juliet romance is innocent and touching, thanks to the underplaying and genuine naturalness of Hatosy and Smart, who have a vibrant chemistry.

Hatosy comes across as a troubled boy who outwardly pretends that nothing bothers him, but inwardly is seething with rage and questions. His romance with Jane and the Cornwall prep school do change him, even though he doesn't realize at first that his cockiness is being tempered. Corrente has staged a hilarious sequence that crosscuts marvelously between shots of Tim's high-as-a-kite friend, Drugs Delaney (Jon Abrahams), writing a too-revealing letter to Tim at Cornwall, and shots of Tim squirming in embarrassment as the letter is read to him by the school's dean (Martin).

Later Tim grows bold enough to have a no-holds-barred confrontation with his father. It's a riveting moment -- a mix of heartache and soul-baring -- in which Baldwin proves what a fine actor he truly is by pulling us to tears. Baldwin is perfect as the gritty, gruff, say-anything Old Man who loves his sons, but isn't sure how to show it. Yet he hints of the love that's there and that was there, especially in a scene where he teaches Tim how to tie a tie while Tim's eyes are captured by a photo of his dead mother that's taped to the mirror.

Outside Providence moves seamlessly from hilarity to teary tragedy to drama and back to romance. What a high-wire act for Corrente! The wheelchair-bound Jackie, especially, comes in for some hard knocks, though it's all mischievous fun. And George Wendt, who seems to be in the film for a long time merely for name value, winds up with one of the movie's strongest scenes -- a tell-all session that develops from just sitting around a kitchen table playing cards with the guys.

Peter and Bobby Farrelly co-wrote the script with Corrente and thankfully have made it a lot less wiseguy-ish and more real than Peter's abrasive and somewhat rambling book.

But thanks to some softening of the material, plus added heartfelt moments that are coupled with the realistic performances from a strong cast, the filmmakers have succeeded admirably.

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***** out of five
Outside Providence

Starring : Shawn Hatosy, Amy Smart, Alec Baldwin, George Wendt, Tommy Bone, Tim Crowe, Jon Abrahams, Jack Ferver, George Martin, Richard Jenkins, Mike Cerrone.

Producers: A Miramax Films release written by Michael Corrente, Peter Farrelly and Bobby Farrelly from Peter Farrelly's book, directed by Corrente.

Rated : R, contains drug use, profanity, adult themes.

Running time: 96 minutes.

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