MOVIE REVIEW : ‘Baker Boys’ Cooks a Salty, Sexy Mix

You’ve heard “The Fabulous Baker Boys� (citywide) everywhere. They play under expense-account dinners at restaurants with little paper umbrellas in the banana daiquiris. Their unyielding patter has intruded on more than one businessman’s proposition to the new girl in Accounts Receivable. They played “Feelings� and “People� and “The Girl From Ipanema� 358 times last year, and with any luck, they’ll play them again next year.

They’ve shown us no mercy, why should we cut them any slack? Because “The Fabulous Baker Boys,� a clear-eyed look at an unpromising end of show biz, is as salty and sexy and unhousebroken a movie as you could hope to find. Because writer-director Steve Kloves has a keen eye, a mean wit and a romantic’s heart. And because the fabulous Bridges boys are just that, and Michelle Pfeiffer is delectable, even for her. It does not seem fair that she can sing, too. Maybe she can’t cook. Things have to even out somewhere.

As Frank Baker (Beau Bridges) will confide to us, want him to or not, he and Jack (Jeff Bridges) have been across the 88 keys from each other, gosh, how many years now? Thirty-one? Fifteen of them on-stage as professionals.

That’s a long time on two piano stools. And the funny-dreadful opening scenes make it clear what a long, slow trip down it’s been. Fluorescent luau shirts at Tiki-Bob’s. Tuxedos at the Starfire Lounge. Apathetic, half-sloshed audiences everywhere, 30 years older than they are. Frank would keep grinding on, night after night, but when an old client pays them not to play one night, it’s a sign that the act needs resuscitation.

The 37 girls who audition to be their singer are pretty grand. Their gestures all seem to have been coached by the same folks who do the Junior Miss America pageant, and not one of them can carry a tune. (OK, so the audition-routine-sequence owes everything to Milos Forman’s “Taking Off.� Almost every audition scene since then has; it’s still fiendishly funny.) At least these damsels succeed in getting Jack’s total, mesmerized attention, although it’s probably just an untapped strain of masochism.

Enter Susie Diamond (Pfeiffer), whose most recent professional experience has been on call for the Triple-A escort service, and who has to park her gum before she sings. Her number? “More Than You Know,� and right away we know; my do we know.

With just the right rough edges on this Diamond (and with some really witty music and visual editing effects), we watch these three pound together an act while keeping their lives almost separated. Frank has an (unseen) wife, family and house in the suburbs. Tough cookie Susie has A Past. And Jack has an aging Labrador and Nina, the adoring pre-teen-ager from the upstairs apartment who may not even need a T-shirt that reads “Dramatic Device.�

After a wonderfully rocky start, Susie becomes more and more experienced, until the boys find themselves in the astonishing position of being sought after instead of being barely tolerated. This upward curve to the story is lovely; especially a delicately staged and brilliantly photographed scene on a resort hotel balcony, as the longings of all three are revealed in a scene that’s almost a subtle aria. (The cinematographer is Michael Ballhaus, which should explain everything.)

The movie’s musical high point is a New Year’s Eve scorcher when an emergency calls Frank away and, left to program their own gala, Jack and Susie greet the incoming year with a version of “Makin’ Whoopee� that takes no prisoners. The love scene that follows--staged tenderly, so that we just see Jack’s mouth on the exquisite trench of Susie’s naked back--is one that’s been building since these two bedroom veterans set eyes on one another.

Then, the story seems to take an unexpected bounce. While we’re braced for the plot line about the show-business team that breaks up because one member is offered bigger things, writer Kloves is more interested in the relationship of the boys themselves, as musicians and as brothers. Susie becomes the force needed to have Jack face how much he really hates his life. And the movie requires first a lover’s quarrel, then a brother’s, before things are right again.

Even with patches of tired dialogue about her checkered past, Pfeiffer’s Susie fills the screen so vividly that a lot of the life leaves it when she does, even briefly. Normally, Jeff Bridges’ presence would make up for any imbalance, but he’s playing a man whose psyche is so retracted it’s barely there. Between that and what passes for declarations of attraction on the modern American scene these days, we are not talking major affect here. For an ending to a picture this delicious, it’s like a crepe compared to triple-decker strawberry shortcake. You may just have to learn to love crepes.

The performances, at least, couldn’t be improved upon. Les Boys have honed their timing so their exchanges, like the one about Frank’s touch-up paint for his bald spot, or the fruit war in their hotel suite, are lethally funny without losing their sense of underlying love. Now singing too, Pfeiffer seems to be in the same niche that Ava Gardner was in after “The Flying Dutchman,� as the screen’s reigning goddess. No objections here.