FANCY FOOTWORK FROM KEANU

"Chain Reaction" (12) Savoy, Virgin, Omniplex, UCIs, Dublin

Keanu Reeves, who showed he was no slouch as an action hero in Speed, teams up with Andrew Davis, a director who exhibited his expertise at orchestrating on screen action in The Fugitive, for the pursuit picture, Chain Reaction. However, the result falls quite some distance short of the two aforementioned movies in terms of energy and tension.

A long haired and unusually stocky Keanu plays Eddie, a student machinist employed at a research laboratory in the University of Chicago, where a team of scientists finds a solution to the world's fuel shortage when they devise a way of extracting energy from water. Sinister powers are determined to sabotage that project and when the laboratory is bombed and its visionary scientist murdered, Eddie and a young scientist (Rachel Weisz) are set up as chief suspects and go on the run together, with half a dozen federal agencies in hot pursuit.

What follows is a routine chase movie which transcends the sheer familiarity of its story and screenplay - the work of no less than five credited writers only in the lively, well staged action scenes which involve Keanu escaping by motorcycle from a massive explosion, running up a drawbridge which is about to open, racing by boat across a frozen lake, and performing fancy footwork when pursued through a vast museum.

"The Sun, the Moon and the Stars"

(15), UCIs and Virgin

A plot that involves a pizza spiked with magic mushrooms and a belly dancing contest with Jason Donovan must have looked promising on paper Rites of passage of various kinds are enacted in Geraldine Creed's contemporary drama of family life, as an annual holiday to the seaside becomes a turning point in the life of Mo (Gina Moxley), a separated wife, harassed mother and bank official, and her teenage daughter Shelley (Elaine Cassidy).

Under the influence of her new friendship with Abbie (Angie Dickinson), an older American woman, Mo begins to reassess her life. She emerges from the rut she has been in and enjoys a lighthearted liaison with a young Australian adventurer (Jason Donovan) - observed with disapproval and jealousy by the petulant, disaffected Shelley, who sticks pins in an effigy of Abbie in her spare time.

Despite the many references to the occult, to witchcraft, mystery, black magic and Tarot cards from which the film's title derives - there is a distinct lack of magic in the way it is all put together.

There is a flatness and occasional awkwardness about the lead performances (apart from Angie Dickinson's) which the film's emphasis on character development and interaction makes all the more apparent. The pace is leisurely in the extreme, the style expository in a banal, soap opera manner, and the script uneven, leaving the overall impression of a short piece that has been ill advisedly extended to an hour and a half, and lacks the lightness of touch that might have redeemed it.

"The Stupids" (Gen) Savoy, Omniplex, UCIs

There was a time when John Landis made smart, witty, trashy movies like American Werewolf in London and Trading Places. Landis hasn't made much of note for quite a while now, but his new film is certainly an eye opener, if for all the wrong reasons. The stupids is without doubt the worst film to receive a theatrical release here for some years. It's a complete mystery why anyone would wish to inflict such crass, unfunny rubbish on a paying audience, but potential patrons are advised that only a particularly perverse, masochism will keep them in their seats for the whole damned thing. Tom Arnold and Jessica Lundy supposedly play the eponymous Stanley and Joan Stupid, but the real idiots are the raft of famous film directors - Robert Wise, Gillo Pontecorvo, Costa Gavras, David Cronenberg and Atom Egoyan among them - who agreed to make cameo appearances in this rubbish.

"The Adventures of Pinocchio" (PG), Virgin

Carlo Collod is marvellous, enduring novel about the puppet who has to learn the hard way what it means to be human has suffered many dilutions and distortions over the past 130 years. Steve Barron's new version restores some of the sharp social realism of the original, adds the latest animatronic technology and a dollop of mawkish pop songs, to create a live action film that looks superb, but tries too hard to grab the attention of sophisticated 1990s children and is marred by sentimentality.

Alan Cameron's production design loosely places the tale in a small Italian town in the early 19th century, imbuing the scenes with a fairytale romanticism which is echoed by Maurizio Millenotti's exuberant costumes. Martin Landau makes an appealing Geppetto, the master puppeteer who is heartbroken to be parted from his latest creation.

Pinocchio himself has a gratingly winsome American accent and is joined half way through by Pepe, an animated cricket, who spouts irritating, anachronistic wisecracks. The bland songs from Stevie Wonder and Brian May add to the sense that cinematic justice has yet to be done to Collodi's rich and resonant tale.