`Major Payne': More Box-Office Junk

----------------------------------------------------------------- Movie review

X "Major Payne," with Damon Wayans, Karyn Parsons, William Hickey, Michael Ironside, Albert Hall. Directed by Nick Castle, from a script by Wayans, Dean Lorey and Gary Rosen. City Centre, Crossroads, Everett Mall, Factoria, Grand Cinemas Alderwood, Kent, Mountlake 9, Oak Tree, Renton Village, SeaTac Mall, Totem Lake, Valley drive-in. "PG-13" - Parental guidance advised because of language, tasteless jokes. -----------------------------------------------------------------

Despite the continuing success of Jim Carrey, the dumbing-down of American movies isn't playing all that well at the box office.

"The Jerky Boys," "Heavyweights" and "Houseguest" have all opened and fizzled, while the much-ballyhooed, lowest-common-denominator interactive film, "Mr. Payback," closed yesterday at the a Renton theater that was redesigned just a few weeks ago to showcase it.

Adam Sandler's deliberately dopey "Billy Madison" turned out to have no legs, while the year's first "adult" hit, "Outbreak," has alienated many adult moviegoers who find its treatment of genuine medical emergencies insultingly juvenile.

The box-office slide that began in January hasn't ended, mostly because there's so little variety at the malls right now. Hollywood's successes in 1993 and 1994 happened because many kinds of audiences were being served. That's not happening so far in 1995, which is nearly $100 million behind 1994 in box-office receipts.

Adding to the junk pile is the new Damon Wayans comedy, "Major Payne," which spends 97 minutes trying to turn brutality and stupidity into some kind of asset. The star of "Blankman" and "Mo' Money" (and previously Carrey's co-star on "In Living Color"), Wayans plays a Gulf War veteran with no wars left to fight, who longs for "the sweet smell of mustard gas."

Naturally he's assigned to take over the Junior R.O.T.C. of a Virginia military academy. The kids range from 6 to 16, but he treats them all as if they were spending their first week in boot camp. No humiliation is too rough, no toilet joke too disgusting, and of course every ruthless punishment Wayans inflicts on his "girly mouths" is supposed to be as playful as it is outrageous.

Fond of breaking the fingers of his enemies and using "dummy grenades" that explode just like the real ones, Major Benson Payne lets the cadets know that they've measured up to his standards when he stops referring to them as fecal matter and starts calling them maggots. Somehow this behavior proves irresistible to them and the brain-dead doctor (Karyn Parsons) who takes him to dinner and watches him decimate a gourmet meal in 10 seconds.

"Major Payne" is a remake of one of Charlton Heston's rare comedies, "The Private War of Major Benson," a 1955 heart-warmer about a rigid militarist who takes over a Catholic boarding school. A minor box-office hit and an Oscar nominee for best story, it made a star of 6-year-old Tim Hovey. Although you won't find any of Hovey's formulaic pictures ("Toy Tiger," "Everything But the Truth") on videocassette these days, he was the Macaulay Culkin of his day.

Cadet Tiger, the Hovey role in "Major Payne," is played by Orlando Brown, who's cute and irrepressible but never gets a chance to steal the picture. It's so much a Wayans vehicle that at times it seems like one long close-up of his gold-tooth grin.