Even Gere Can't Save `Mr. Jones'

Movie review

X 1/2 "Mr. Jones," with Richard Gere, Lena Olin, Anne Bancroft, Tom Irwin, Delroy Lindo. Directed by Mike Figgis, from a script by Eric Roth and Michael Cristofer. Factoria, Grand Cinemas Alderwood, Kent, Lewis & Clark, Oak Tree, Uptown. "R" - Restricted because of language. -------------------------------------------------------------------

Mental illness can be charming. Uptight psychiatrists should sleep with their liberated patients. Love conquers all traumas and chemical imbalances.

After "The Fisher King," "King of Hearts," "The Prince of Tides" and too many other half-baked attempts to prove all or some of the above, do we really need another addition to the genre?

Especially one starring Richard Gere, who just last year played a psychiatrist who slept with his patient's sister in "Final Analysis"?

This time he's the patient and Lena Olin is the psychiatrist who can't help herself when Gere turns seductively manic-depressive in her presence. She's going through a rough time with her womanizing husband, Gere saves her life when another patient tries to strangle her, and she's enchanted by his erratic brilliance.

To its credit, "Mr. Jones" does attempt to deal with the difficult aspects of this relationship. Although Gere's impulsively charismatic character inspires instant affairs and friendships, and he denies that he's suicidal or moody, he's got real troubles.

He gets so wired up that he tries to fly off a building, disrupts a Beethoven concert by taking over the conducting chores, and withdraws all his money to spend it on the bank teller who hands him the cash. He may play half his scenes jiving to James Brown's "I Feel Good," but he does crash.

"What would you risk anything for?" he asks Olin. He wants her to give up everything, and their lack of caution does have consequences.

Unfortunately, the script is so hopelessly superficial that very little of this registers. It's the work of Eric Roth, who wrote the unspeakable Billy Crystal comedy, "Memories of Me," and Michael Cristofer, a playwright whose most prominent previous screen credit was the disastrous "Bonfire of the Vanities."

It doesn't help that Olin gives a curiously frigid performance, or that the other characters are so thinly developed that even Anne Bancroft doesn't seem too sure how to approach her role. Tom Irwin is a non-entity as Olin's best friend, Delroy Lindo can't connect with the construction worker who tries to make Gere a member of his family, while newcomer Lisa Malkiewicz is almost too convincing as the bimbo bank teller.

Add director Mike Figgis, the once-promising British filmmaker who previously directed Gere in the overheated cop thriller, "Internal Affairs," and you end up with a match made in movie hell.

In too many ways, "Mr. Jones" is a throwback to the bad old Gere days of the early 1980s. There's the obligatory nude scene (more modest than before), the show-off acting (shades of "Breathless"), the endless twitching to suggest a soul in torment (Gere's loincloth dance in "King David" comes to mind).

Coming so soon after the critical-commercial success of "Sommersby," in which he did his best work in years, it's just a shame.