MOVIE REVIEW : Engaging Falk Provides Lift for a Wearying ‘Tune In Tomorrow’

Movies about the fine line between reality and fantasy are usually arty, self-conscious horrors. “Tune In Tomorrow . . .” isn’t in that category. Its faults are of a reverse sort; it makes so little of the mystery of the reality-fantasy interchange that it comes across like a great big rambunctious cartoon. Fantasy knocks reality out of the box.

Based on the 1977 Mario Vargas Llosa novel “Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter,” the film is about what happens when a dotty, inspired radio writer named Pedro Carmichael (Peter Falk) is hired by WXBU, “the Voice of New Orleans,” to spark its low-rated soap-opera. This he does, and, in the process, sparks the lives of his co-workers--specifically the 21-year-old Martin (Keanu Reeves), an aspiring radio writer who is in love with Julia (Barbara Hershey), his 35-year-old, twice-divorced aunt by marriage.

The film’s scenario whittles down Vargas Llosa’s narrative, in which real-life chapters alternated with Pedro’s soapsuds fantasies. The film settles on one of Pedro’s plot lines: a complicated story compounding adultery, incest, mistaken identity--the works. (Such well-known faces as Henry Gibson, John Larroquette, Dan Hedaya, Hope Lange, Elizabeth McGovern and Peter Gallagher turn up in this story line.)

The film’s not-too-subtle conceit is that the romantic entanglements of Martin and Julia inspire Pedro’s perfervid imagination; he sets up liaisons between them and then, employing various disguises ranging from charwoman to rabbi, eavesdrops on their dialogue, which then ends up in his radio drama, influencing the couple’s real-life affair.

For Pedro, writing isn’t just a job, it’s a mission. When he directs the actors in the radio studio, he whips them into a frenzy to match his own. “I want your souls to enter the microphones,” he says, and he means it literally. Pedro may appear to be a hack, but, in the film’s terms, he is also the soul of creation. His soaps are low-grade but they’re entertaining as hell; they fulfill the first requirement of any story--we want to know what happens next.

And Pedro goes a step further; he uses his dramas as a way of making reality happen. At one time or another all writers probably feel like they’re playing God. Pedro actively courts godliness. He’s the writer as cosmic matchmaker.

Pedro’s antics are more entertaining than the soap opera that we see, or even Julia and Martin’s budding romance. The soap sequences are lively camp but they’re overblown; even though the film (throughout San Diego County) is set in 1951, the scenes have the floridness of some of the more batty episodes of “Dallas” or “Dynasty.” A more straightforward approach to these sequences might have worked better. Jon Amiel, who directed from a script by William Boyd, doesn’t seem to recognize that soaps already contain a built-in component of self-satire. He overdoes what was overdone to begin with.

Keanu Reeves has some problems with his New Orleans accent, but he has a breezy, engaging presence and a winning, hangdog lyricism whenever his love-struck Martin is moping about the beloved Julia. Barbara Hershey makes his love for her believable. Although born in New Orleans, she’s currently a New York refugee, and we can see how her brittle, citified ways might stir him up.

Julia’s tough-gal cynicism is pretty transparent, though, and Martin spots her frailty. It’s what finally wins her over to him. Hershey is one of those comparatively few performers whose talents have deepened with age. Julia isn’t a major role, but Hershey attacks it as if it were. This is the same actress who was so extraordinary in “A World Apart” and, on television, “A Killing in a Small Town.”

Peter Falk has a small field day as Pedro. Even though his scenes are scaled to be funnier than they actually are, he sashays into his multiple roles with glee. But Amiel doesn’t encourage him to bring out the nightmarish quality in the changeovers, the way, in “Lolita,” Kubrick and Peter Sellers collaborated to bring out the creepiness in Nabokov’s Clare Quilty. (That’s still probably the greatest multiple-personality performance ever.) The film is so resolutely jokey that Falk never has a chance to demonstrate the scary potential in Pedro’s cosmic matchmaking.

Vargas Llosa’s novel, which was set in Lima, Peru, and based on his own early, scandalous marriage to his aunt, had a denser, more mysterious texture. “Tune In Tomorrow . . .” (rated PG-13) is a gagster’s movie, and, like most gag fests, you sit back and sort out the good skits from the bad. You learn to settle for less.

‘TUNE IN TOMORROW ...’

A Cinecom Entertainment release. Executive producer Joseph Caracciolo Jr. Producers John Fiedler and Mark Tarlov. Director Jon Amiel. Screenplay William Boyd, based on the novel “Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter” by Mario Vargas Llosa. Cinematography Robert Stevens. Music Wynton Marsalis. Production design Jim Clay. Costumes Betsy Heimann. Film editor Peter Boyle. With Peter Falk, Barbara Hershey, Keanu Reeves, Peter Gallagher, Dan Hedaya.

Running time: 1 hour, 58 minutes.

MPAA-rated: PG-13 (mild sexual situations).