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sfgate.com Businesses  « Back to Article  "Magic' is rough on
the audience  Published 4:00 am, Friday, May 30, 1997 Larger |
Smaller Email This Page 1 of 1  WHEN WE ARE reduced to
instructing Bridget Fonda to rest her chin on her chest and say
most of her lines looking up from under her eyelids as if she
were Lauren Bacall in "To Have and Have Not," we are indeed at a
critical juncture of filmmaking.  Clare Peploe's "Rough Magic"
hasn't got enough ideas of its own for one crummy movie, so it
creeps back into cinematic history to steal idiosyncracies of
past movies, as if this might help.  According to publicity
materials, Peploe, who wrote the script with William Brookfield,
believes this movie is  "equal parts film noir, romantic
adventure and magical thriller."  The references to magical
realism are unmistakable and sadly misguided. For a spiritual
seeker, you cast Patricia Arquette or Winona Ryder. Fonda is
just a little too white bread, too all-Ame