M O V I E S Primary Colors Directed by Mike Nichols Starring John Travolta, Emma Thompson and Adrian Lester - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - ALSO THIS WEEK Wild Things Neve Campbell in a sultry, trashy -- and devious -- thriller - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - LAST WEEK Dawson's Creek The hyping of a so-called hit The Man in the Iron Mask Leonardo DiCaprio is king of the beasts Love and Death on Long Island A snobby novelist falls for a teen heartthrob John Sayles An interview with the director of "Men With Guns" - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Blue Glow DAILY TV PICKS - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - RECENTLY A full list of recent reviews, interviews and table talk. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - BROWSE THE ARCHIVES MOVIES TELEVISION INTERVIEWS FEATURES

standing for nothing _____ MIKE NICHOLS' VERSION OF JOE KLEIN'S CLINTONIAN SATIRE IS THE PERFECT POLITICAL MOVIE FOR TODAY -- EMPTY AND CYNICAL. BY CHARLES TAYLOR As a president, Bill Clinton is what my wife would call the quintessential bad boyfriend: the guy you can't help falling for who'll let you down every time. As a director, Mike Nichols has always been what people call the quintessential politician: the smoothie who talks a good game but won't let himself be pinned down on anything. Pauline Kael nailed his approach to making movies in her review of "Carnal Knowledge" when she likened it to "a neon sign that spells out the soullessness of neon." Nichols' film of Joe Klein's novel "Primary Colors" isn't just about the necessary compromises that the political process entails. It's a compromise in itself, a slack, tepid picture stuck in a no man's land between satire and drama. Clinton haters can take the film as proof of the president's dishonesty, and Clinton lovers can read it as an affirmation of his flawed humanity. That's less the result of any calculated shrewdness on Nichols' part than the inevitable result of his standard cool, distanced superiority. Politics inevitably break the hearts of idealistic naifs who equate any shimmying, any compromise, with corruption. Henry Burton (Adrian Lester), a young black college teacher, former political aide and grandson of a famous civil rights leader who signs on to the presidential campaign of Gov. Jack Stanton (John Travolta), is just that kind of idealist. Nichols is close to the other end of the spectrum. Watching "Primary Colors," I never once got the feeling that Nichols believed it mattered a whit who is elected. That strikes me as an awfully strange approach to adapting a novel that is so specifically about the disillusionment that afflicted those of us who fell for Clinton. What Klein does so well in the book's opening pages is evoke Clinton's political gift for making people feel, in their fleeting contact with him, that they, as individuals, count. "They were all over him, clapping his back, shaking his hand, hugging him. He didn't back off, keep his space, the way most pols would; he leaned into them, and seemed to get as much satisfaction from touching them, draping his big arm over their shoulders, as they got from him." As Stanton/Clinton, Travolta gives an accurate, sometimes uncanny impersonation. He gets that rheumy look that comes over Clinton when he is moved by something, that almost-squint of empathy that makes you feel he is both at the mercy of his emotions and appraising them for later use. During a televised debate, when an opponent asks Stanton if there is anything he doesn't believe in, the unashamed moral passion of Travolta's answer might remind you why you ever believed in Clinton (if you did). But these are moments caught on the fly. Travolta never goes beyond impersonation. He's primed to play caricature here, and that's often what Elaine May's script supplies him with: talking about his next move with doughnut dust around his mouth, or exclaiming, "I just can't catch a break!" when he's told a pregnant black teenager is claiming he got her that way. Much of what Travolta does is so transparently a pol's glad-handing that you don't believe for a second anyone would be taken in by him. And if you can't believe there's anything genuine in Stanton, then the film's attempts to shift into drama are doomed, because nothing is at stake. N E X T_P A G E _| Emma Thompson's humiliation

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