SONS OF WAYNE’S WORLD

Whole lot of stupidity going on at the movies these days, which is not altogether unusual. What’s different is that dumbness is so often a film’s subject, not merely the prime cause of its being made. Forrest Gump is poised to win a bunch of Oscars for sweetly celebrating an imbecile, and Jim Carrey stands on the brink of superstardom for satirizing a certain type of idiocy-the kind that actually thinks it’s smart-in Dumb and Dumber. A couple of weeks ago, Billy Madison, the story of a rich moron forced to repeat all the grades (1 through 12) he had flunked, and one of the most execrable movies ever made, was No. 1 at the box office. Last week a comedy about a dim American family, The Brady Bunch Movie, succeeded Billy at the top of the charts.

Quivers of alarm in all the best places! First the bellowing inanity of talk radio, then the meanest political season anyone can remember and now this goofball assault on the higher sensibility. Are we confronting the death of civilization as we know it? Maybe yes, maybe no. But before you choose door No. 1, here are three simple, ultimately consoling exercises to try.

1) Count backward on your fingers, letting each stand for a month. Stop around 15 or 16, and then recall which movie was about to gross an astonishing $100 million back then. That’s right, folks, it was Wayne’s World. Now calculate how long it takes for the competition to crank up hit imitations. Oh, something like 15 to 16 months. All movie trends begin in the yearning hearts of producers who missed the first boat.

2) Remember the Three Stooges, Abbott and Costello, Inspector Clouseau and Jerry Lewis when he was still willing to cross his eyes and gibber simultaneously. A little historical-perspective music, maestro, if you please: everybody has always laughed-and always will-at dumb and childish behavior. It makes us feel better when we remember all the times we’ve acted dumb and childish. And the Billy Madisons aside, it’s infinitely preferable to so-called wit that deteriorates into Ready to Wear snottiness.

3) Go see The Brady Bunch Movie. Its largest aim, of course, is to encourage aging boomers to nostalgize over the television programs that warped their childhood. But Sherwood Schwartz, who created the show back in 1969 (and also contributed Gilligan’s Island to American thought and culture), is no dope. He has encouraged a legion of producers and writers (and one quick-witted director, Betty Thomas) to another kind of warping-time warping. They’ve moved the Bradys-lock, stock and retro-moderne suburban home-into the 1990s and invited them to confront the world of carjackings, alternative life-styles and grunge with their serene, antique innocence.

Thanks, no, is their response. Dad (Gary Cole) is still reading Jonathan Livingston Seagull. Mom (Shelley Long) confidently orders 20 lbs. of red meat for a family feast; cholesterol is no more part of her world view than Beavis and Butt-head are. The eldest daughter Marcia (Christine Taylor), who still ties up the bathroom every morning giving her long blond hair the 3,000 daily brushstrokes she deems necessary to maintain its luster, is outraged by an attempt at a French kiss (“I thought you were from Nebraska,” she tells the boy) and sweetly oblivious to her best pal’s lesbian longings. Her younger sister Jan (Jennifer Elise Cox) is, by Brady standards, more troubled. What’s the problem, inquires the guidance counselor who’s seen it all-suicidal thoughts, bulimia, pregnancy? Nope, sibling rivalry and the justifiable fear that her glasses make her look nerdy.

The implicit acknowledgement that the Bunch always was out of it (on TV Vietnam never left its muddy footprints on their AstroTurf yard) is good self-satire. More important, the Bradys represent the manners and morals idealized by conservatives. But in fin-de-siecle America they just look silly, and this movie suggests (probably unintentionally) that we have to find new ways and words to express our best impulses. If dumbness is a large part of our problem, then The Brady Bunch Movie is a small (and oddly cheery) part of its solution.