THE CURRENT CINEMA

COOKIE MONSTERS

Travolta makes war, and Woody Allen bakes a treat.

BY ANTHONY LANE

Here's a thought. "Taking the very, very sane person in present time, one would mark a decline of his sanity by a shift from an interest in present time to an overwhelming interest in the future which would decline into considerable planning for the future in order to avoid bad things happening in it." Those are the words of the late L. Ron Hubbard, the author of more than a dozen books of science fiction.The most famous is "Battlefield Earth," which is set in the year 3000, and which has now been made into a motion picture.

It stars Barry Pepper as Jonnie, one of a band of humans --- or "man-animals" --- subsisting in the hilly wastes of what was once America. Mankind, we are informed at the beginning,"is an endangered species," and Jonnie risks his neck by venturing into the ruins of a city. I think it is meant to be New York, but, sadly, the standard of special effects in this film is not as high as it might be, and it can be hard to identify precisely where the characters are, or what they are doing there. Anyway,Jonnie is happily feasting on roasted flesh when he is attacked, captured, and transported to a giant greenhouse,where he is forced into slavery by the evil Psychlos from Planet Psychlo. Serves him right for taking so long over lunch.

The Psychlos have a huge hairy dome at the rear of their heads and a mass of dreadlocks at the front. They look like the love children of Bob Marley and Dusty Springfield. We are introduced to their chief of security (John Travolta), and I am embarrassed to admit that I didn't quite catch his name. I think it was Terl, but it could have been Duh or Grrr. One thing is made absolutely clear: there are no Psychlos called Annabel or Violet, just as there are no Psychlos who enjoy being sent to work on Earth --- or, as Terl calls it, "this pitiful excuse for a planet."

His next move, which I still can't fathom, is to educate Jonnie in Psychlo language and culture; the poor fellow has to sit in a dentist's chair and have an astral jet of pure wisdom stream directly into his eyes, like someone watching a repeat of "Melrose Place." The plan backfires, because Jonnie is now equipped to kick against the pricks and urge his fellow-animals to arise. Up goes the cry: "We have seven days to take the planet back!"No longer must they fester in cages and dine off cold green porridge! L. Ron Hubbard, who stood for nothing if not freedom, would undoubtedly have thrilled to the sight of them. Tragically, in the words of "Scientology: A New Slant on Life," Hubbard "departed his body on January 24, 1986."

Speaking as one who departed his mind about twenty minutes into "Battlefield Earth," I must confess myself baffled. For a start, the picture is surprisingly violent. I am aware, of course, of L. Ron's warning that "when you start to introduce order into anything, disorder shows up and blows off," but, given the choice, I would have preferred not to see quite so many bodies being smashed with iron tools. The director is Roger Christian, which is a blow to those of us who were praying for the film to be made by someone called Dick Scientologist. I was waiting for a Hubbard-style education in the ways of beingness and Clears. ("The name of a state achieved through auditing. . . The Clear has no engrams which can be re-stimulated to throw out the correctness of computations.") Far from resorting to what L. Ron rightly censures as "low-toned mockery" ("a little band down very close to death on the Tone Scale"), I was peacefully prepared for my first, stirring encounter with enlightenment. And what did we get? This pitiful excuse for an entertainment: the "Showgirls" of sci-fi.

Travolta, who was also one of the producers of the picture, does his best. He judiciously gives himself the villain's role and makes a concerted, if doomed, effort to instill a dash of camp. There is a love interest, but the squeeze in question succeeds only in getting a big laugh toward the end, when she tells Jonnie, "I always knew this would be your destiny." Given that when she last saw Jonnie he was living in a hut with a mud floor, and that he is currently organizing Harrier jump jets to shoot down alien spacecraft, she is clearly a girl of some imagination. By this time, the movie theatre was resounding to the howls of low-toned mockery and the ominous clap of seats flipping back up, and I began to wonder what the outcome of this project might be. Even though it functions neither as propaganda nor as allegory, the names of Hubbard and Travolta onscreen will insure that people make the connection, and therein lies the problem; the one thing that could dent the armor-plated cause of Scientology is the sound of global derision. Travolta is perhaps the best-known Scientologist alive --- a good advertisement for the faith, you might say --- but, when Tom Cruise, Nicole Kidman, Mimi Rogers, Kirstie Alley, Isaac Hayes, and all the fellow-faithful troop in to watch this farrago, will they really be convinced that it was such a good idea? "People are the victims of their own flinch," as L. Ron so beautifully put it, and "Battlefield Earth" may be a flinch too far.

[remainder of article is a positive review of Woody Allen's new movie "Small Time Crooks"]