'Blue Sky'

'Blue Sky' By Rita Kempley Washington Post Staff Writer September 16, 1994

Loosely based on the childhood memories of Army brat Rama Laurie Stagner, the '60s-set family drama explores the relationship between an unstable bombshell, Carly (Lange), and her reliable husband, Hank (Jones). Of course, their two daughters (Amy Locane and Anna Klemp) are damaged by the fallout.

When the film opens, Hank, a military scientist specializing in nuclear radiation, is stationed at a paradisiacal Hawaiian base, but is then reassigned to a dreary stateside post. Carly, whose scandalous behavior provoked the reassignment, is devastated at the sight of their shabby new quarters in an Alabama backwater. But with Hank there to cradle her, Carly's depression lifts and it's party time.

The girls, especially the older one, have long known that their mother, a classic manic-depressive, needs help, but Hank believes he's all the help she needs. Besides, with psychiatric intervention Carly might get well, and then she wouldn't need her "daddy" anymore. The girls might have a mother instead of a sister, but the family equilibrium would be irrevocably altered.

Change is never easy. That's why we'd rather watch fictional characters go through it than do it ourselves. But Hank and Carly don't undergo the most minimal metamorphosis. Instead, they traipse off into another story involving a military coverup that lands Hank in the psych ward. Carly, who was tricked into signing the papers, resolves not only to get Daddy out of the hospital, but to alert the media to the dangers of nuclear testing.

Good-bye, Salome. Hello, Silkwood.

While screenwriters Stagner, Jerry Leichtling and Arlene Sarner have laid some groundwork for this twist, it still seems they've simply run out of story. The departure is also visually at odds with what had been an intimate portrait of a dysfunctional family's struggle. Not to mention that Richardson, who moved from stage to film, was more at home with characters than with exteriors involving rumbling earth and mushroom clouds.

The British director's career peaked in the '60s with "Tom Jones" and such kitchen sink soaps as "A Taste of Honey," which "Blue Sky" echoes in a faint and rosy sort of way. Seemingly the old pro made the set a comfortable one for Lange to offer a plush, platinum star turn. She is what Carly imagines she might have become if only she hadn't been a military wife: mostly Monroe with a soupcon of Bardot.

"Women like you are the reason men like women in the first place," observes Carrie Snodgress, the original Mad Housewife, playing the base commander's missus. The commander, played by the reptilian Powers Boothe, takes advantage of Carly's weakness for other men while Hank's off measuring nuclear radiation in Nevada. Jones gives as good as he gets back from Lange, whose fire melts his reserve as the scientist and military man. If only the material were as believable and as consistent as the actors, there'd be nothing but blue skies indeed.

"Blue Sky" is rated PG-13 for sexually suggestive situations.

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