Cinema: Rushes Johnny Dangerously

“Do you know your name is an adverb?” a woman he is trying to woo snaps at the title character. The wit in this spoof of the old-fashioned gangster melodrama never rises above that mildly agreeable level and is often below it. But perhaps because the writers outnumber Director Amy Heckerling 4 to 1, Johnny Dangerously offers more verbal felicity than it does visual flair. Heckerling has no feeling, affectionate or malevolent, for the genre she is trying to parody and no sense of comic rhythm either. The result is a thin and clumsy thing, in which talented Michael Keaton leads a cast of good actors in search of the missing beat. Only the redoubtable Maureen Stapleton, listening to some wild pulse of her own, finds something she can dance to.