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Newsday June 10, 2001 [Long Island] Newsday Section 10, Page 5 Gene Seymour on Movies A Small Medium's Largesse [photo of DD in Evolution] The best American films of 2001 - so far, anyway, could be seen every Sunday at 9 p.m. on HBO between March 4 and May 20. The Sopranos could stand as the only exhibit in the case for series television's overall superiority to the theatrical movies this year, and no literate jury in Western civilization would rule against it. If needed, there are many other examples you could cite, not all from cable, not all of them dramas. Any half-hour episode of Fox's Malcolm in the Middle this past season was more imaginatively written and at least a dozen times funnier than any big-screen comedy that's opened since January at the Global Village Multiplex off Exit Whatever. And yet, even with such grand disparity of quality, there's this Pecksniffian snobbery within and without the media against television actors busting a move to the movies. The gossip page sharpies can barely conceal their sneers whenever a small-screen star announces that he or she is forsaking the quest for Emmy and is off to stalk Oscar. Granted, the sneers are backed by history - and by the latest Saturday Night Live knock-off that comes to mind. For every Eddie Murphy, Mike Myers or Bill Murray who has run up big-screen bonus points, there are four or five other SNL alumni still groping for a movie vehicle that doesn't swan dive to home videos. The percentages are just as tricky for those who are ready for prime time. Steve McQueen and Sally Field became bigger stars in movies than they were on television. But James Garner, Dick Van Dyke, Bill Cosby and Mary Tyler Moore are among the more conspicuous examples of TV icons who reached for movie stardom only to fall back into the tube's fuzzy, ardent embrace. More recently, both Helen Hunt and George Clooney seem to be headed for long, happy post- TV lives in the movies, while David Caruso still wonders what the heck happened between NYPD Blue and Jade. But though Clooney is proving himself as one of the few leading men capable of bright, agile work in comedy and action, he still gets a few unwarranted raspberries from the skeptics. People still resent him for abandoning ER - and their living rooms. They believe he'll pay for his presumptuousness someday. (Don't hold your breath.) These same folks are harder on those who make bolder leaps. Many loved Gillian Anderson's performance in The House of Mirth just for the fact that she dared to do it in the first place. Others hated it for the same reason. Television actress! was one moviegoer's huffy dismissal of Anderson's risky turn. He didn't seem to think anything else needed to be said. David Duchovny, Anderson's partner on Fox's The X-Files, hasn't gotten much more respect for his own forays into movies, though he's got a lot of people pulling for him. The eight-year success of that legendary series owes as much to his droll, cool persona as to mass paranoia. Some wags have detected in Duchovny the soul of a comic actor, the likes of which hasn't been seen in movies since elegance and restraint were overwhelmed by bombast and bull. Playing God (1997) gave Duchovny a suitably quirky lead role, some chewy-gonzo dialogue and a wet-noodle story that all but murdered your appetite for faux noir. Last summer's Return to Me showed off Duchovny's generosity and grace. But his acerbic edges were sanded down to smoothness palatable enough for this old-fashioned romantic comedy. Ivan Reitman's Evolution, which opened Friday, tries to use Duchovny's sly detachment in the same way that Reitman's Ghostbusters used Bill Murray's 17 years ago. The difference is that Murray was able to place himself so far outside the ludicrous situation and overbearing slapstick that he was almost sitting in the audience's lap, sharing its popcorn. As relaxed and confident as he is on screen as a scientist confronting aliens and bureaucrats, Duchovny is more trapped than Murray was by the material. It's nice to see intelligence such as his given its props in an era when idiot savants rule movie comedy, on and off screen. But the sleazy antics demanded from him and his co-star Orlando Jones don't quite fit their personas. They aren't the bullyboys that Murray and Dan Aykroyd were, and it's a shame that no one made the effort to drain the old grease and mold from the 1980s horror spoof and fashion a _script_ worthy of the newer crew. Some may once again taunt Duchovny for overreaching beyond television. But he's not the problem. It's the hide-bound attitude that television is a step down from movies and movies are a step up from television. It becomes increasingly obvious that as TV's best actors take their chances with the big screen, it's the movies that will have to grow to their level rather than the other way around. ### alfornos
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