Garner's Rare Gifts Save Lame `Americans'

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XX "My Fellow Americans," with James Garner, Jack Lemmon, Dan Aykroyd, John Heard, Lauren Bacall, Sela Ward, Wilford Brimley. Directed by Peter Segal, from a script by E. Jack Kaplan, Richard Chapman and Peter Tolan. Aurora, Cinema 17, City Centre, Crossroads, Everett 9, Grand Cinemas, Issaquah 9, Kirkland Parkplace, Metro, Mountlake 9, Renton Village, SeaTac North, South Hill Mall. "PG-13" - Parental guidance advised because of salty language and innuendo.

It takes a special actor's grace to survive a script as lame as "My Fellow Americans," and James Garner has it. Without appearing to break a sweat, Garner makes each grotesquely desperate attempt at humor look smooth and assured. In his hands, everything seems funnier than it is.

Even when he's reduced to nicknaming genitalia at a urinal, then forced repeatedly to refer to his co-star, Jack Lemmon, by one of those nicknames, he never steps outside his character to wince, roll his eyes or otherwise suggest that he'd be happier elsewhere. Garner is an unflappable pro, prepared to take any dubious script idea and triumph over it.

Lemmon is a busier, needier kind of actor, more obviously hard-working, and he tends to beg for laughs here. He also has the lousier part.

Both men have been cast as ex-presidents who hate each other, but Matthew Douglas, the failed Democrat Garner plays, is supposed to be kind of cool, while Lemmon's clueless Republican, Russell Kramer, has been giving exactly the same speech for at least a decade.

Yet somehow Kramer's wife (Lauren Bacall) is devoted to him, while Douglas' wife got bored after their stay in the White House and left him. When they find themselves on the same Air Force One, flying to attend a state funeral, the old animosities come out and they bicker and compete, comparing popularity polls and failed assassination attempts.

They've barely begun to roast each other when the plot starts moving. A kickback scandal has erupted, and the current president (Dan Aykroyd) and his racist, dim-bulb vice president (John Heard), are steering clear of it. In the process, Kramer and Douglas get shot at, their helicopter blows up and they're forced to become fugitives and rely on each other.

They befriend an illegal Mexican immigrant, accidentally march in a gay-pride parade and encounter a homeless couple who blame both ex-presidents for the fact that they're living in their car.

Occasionally the script suggests what might have been: a contemporary variation on Preston Sturges' Depression classic, "Sullivan's Travels," in which the privileged learn about the have-nots by taking to the road and getting a glimpse of how the rest of the country lives. But the writers and director Peter Segal ("Tommy Boy") are no more serious about this than they are about the half-dozen other genres they flirt with.

Already nicknamed "Grumpy Old Presidents" by Variety, "My Fellow Americans" relies heavily on the kick of seeing famous, aging actors muttering vulgarities, doing mildly naughty things and making feeble attempts at political satire. When Kramer drains a hotel liquor cabinet and refills the empties with water, his wife tells him to stop it: "It's so George Bush!"

Playing what looks like a variation on President Clinton, Garner doesn't even get a line with that much juice. But he makes what he's been given seem tolerable, and that takes a special kind of acting skill.