Little Treasure

Film Review (Variety, May 8, 1985)

Little Treasure.  (Color).  Slight story strips chances.

      A Tri-Star Pictures release of a Vista Films/Herb Jaffe production.  Produced by Jaffe.  Stars Margot Kidder, Ted Danson and Burt Lancaster.  Executive producers, Joanna Lancaster, Richard Wagner.  Written and directed by Alan Sharp.  Camera (materocolor), Alex Phillips; editor, Garth Craven; production designers, Jose Rodrigues, Granada & Enrigue Esteves; music, Leo Kottke; sound, Claude Hitchcock; assistant director Ramiro Jaloma; production manager, Ricardo Frera; casting, Lonka Becker.  Reviewed at UA Gemini 1 theater, N.Y., May 3, 1985.

(MPAA - Rating: R.).  Running time:  95 MINS.

Margo	.......................................	Margot Kidder
Eugene	.......................................	Ted Danson
Teschemacher	.......................................	Burt Lancaster
Norman Kane	.......................................	Joseph Hacker
Evangelina	.......................................	Malena Doria
Joseph	.......................................	John Pearce
Sadie	.......................................	Gladys Holland
Charlie	.......................................	Bill Zuckert
Chuck	.......................................	James Hall

      Shot on location in Mexico in early '84, Tri-Star's Little Treasure has received a one-theater booking in Manhattan, with little hope for wider exposure.  Pic, though well-photographed in seldom-seen locales, is painfully slight in terms of story and not likely to attract any but the curious.

      Margot Kidder plays an aimless stipper who at film's start has arrived in a remote Mexican village, having been summoned by her long-departed father.  As soon as she arrives she is befriended by a grizzly American expatriate (Ted Danson) who agrees to take her in his broken- down van to find the old man.

      What appears to be intended as a key point in the picture, the reunion of father and daughter, is brushed away in a few brief scenes and is merely a setup for a hokey adventure in which Danson and Kidder search for stolen money.  Father-daughter thing seems to have been concocted simply to showcase Burt Lancaster, who dies early on from gangrene.  (Reported on-set fight between Lancaster and Kidder during shooting is not betrayed by their characters'  mutual admiration for each other.)

      Picture is skittish at times, and especially unsettling during a sequence in which Kidder, who heretofore has only gone topless (she says) on stage, is offered increasing amounts of cash to all the way by a shady young socialite (Joseph Hacker) who has hired her to perform at an intimate pool gathering.  Long shots of the naked woman, with face indistinguishable, suggest a body- double tactic on Kidder's behalf.

      Danson is the most appealing character on view, but his character's motivations aren't explained sufficiently to justify why he has abandoned civilization; he's simply too amiable to be convincing as a pessimistic outcast.

      For the record, some of the pic's most loving closeups are reserved for cans of Coke, spotlighting the Tri-Star/Columbia connection. -- Gerz