Look Before You Leap

FILM

A Leap of Faith

directed by Richard Pearce

First L.A. Story, now this. Steve Martin isn't just redundant--he's stale.

The only thing that rescues his latest movie, A Leap of Faith, from a one-month rush to the Just In rack at your nearest video store is the audience's hope throughout that it will have some miraculous ending. And something miraculous does happen. The movie ends. If it's really about miracles, Leap of Faith better hope for some at the box office.

Despite its well-played humor, A Leap of Faith fails to make any impact. It doesn't leave you tingly, or touched or ecstatic, or depressed. It just begins and ends. The interim is a potpourri of humor and jumbled meanings which carry hardly any emotional import.

The plot revolves around the evangelistic antics of Rev. Jonas Nightengale (Steve Martin), his business manager Jane Larson (Debra Winger) and their touring revivalist ministry of gospel singers. By some cruel twist, they all get stranded in Rustwater, Kansas, an empty town in all senses of the word. The religious con-games of this fraudulent ministry are eventually pre-empted by the sheriff of the town, Will, who becomes Larson's love interest as the movie drags on.

Martin plays the slick-talking, fast-walking and knee-jerking evangelist who brings some hope into his parish's life--in God we trust, all others pay cash, of course. He performs his "sermons" adjacent his choir, the Angels of Mercy, one of the film's few standouts.

The movie's second saving grace is Winger. We even buy the fact that she's cast as the fleet-footed woman-girl who's constantly searching for an emotional anchor. She always manages to slip out of the committed relationships that might do her some good. Ironically, she finds solace in the least stable and trustworthy elements around her--namely Preacher Martin. Winger provides the film with a breath of fresh air, portraying the frustrated sojourner of myth who finally finds her home among the midst of lime butterflies.

A Leap of Faith scoops out plenty of wry humor, such as when Martin orders the "KKK omelette, white only" at the diner in Kansas. Unfortunately, kneeslapping at the expense of rural folks wears thin. True, Martin holds the record for starring in movies with quaint, happy angles on life, but this one has half the humor without the angle. Martin tires. He bores.

The only reachable conclusion from this travesty: stay away lest you be duped into spending $6.75 by the superstar halo perched on Steve Martin's white-haired head.