Sunday, February 6, 2000

Mary, Rhoda TV-film falls flat

They should have left a good thing alone. That's what you'll think if you watch even five minutes of "Mary and Rhoda," the new TV-movie airing at 7 p.m. Monday on ABC.
   The idea was to reunite Mary Tyler Moore and Valerie Harper in their great CBS sitcom roles as Mary Richards and Rhoda Morganstern, now 25 years older and both single again.
   Mary has returned to New York City from Europe, where she was traveling and trying to deal with the recent death of her congressman husband (we always knew Mary would marry well). Rhoda, having divorced Joe Gerard in her old spin-off series, has married and divorced again and moved back to Manhattan from Paris.
   After a cab-hailing coincidence brings Mary and Rhoda face to face again, they discover that they both have college-age daughters living nearby. The kids (played by Joie Lenz and Marisa Ryan) aren't that thrilled at having their moms back meddling in their lives, but everyone gets along pretty well.
   Sounds like a pleasant enough premise - two women of a certain age trying to regain their equilibrium and, to paraphrase the old "MTM" theme song, hoping to make it on their own.
   But even though love is all around these characters, there's not much else happening to propel this soggy TV-movie. Mary, looking painfully thin and a little creaky around the edges, and Valerie, still over-acting, seem to be half-heartedly impersonating their feisty former selves. Mary does her cutesy-confusion thing. Rhoda does her pushy-but-charming thing.
   And it all falls just as flat as a flitter. Blame the script by Katie Ford, which lacks the wit and pace of the old "MTM" shows written by David Lloyd (among others). She actually reaches for punchlines with lame jokes about tongue studs and nose rings. And blame the location, too. Mary and Rhoda should be back in Minneapolis, not Manhattan.
   Lend him your ears
   Marc Anthony, the salsa stylist who is to Latin music right now what Sinatra was to pop music of the '40s and '50s, gets a one-man show on HBO Saturday (9 p.m.). Scheduled to be taped at Madison Square Garden Thursday night, the special is Anthony's first concert on any network.
   Anthony is quick to define his territory when it come to other Latino artists currently topping the charts, including the Iglesias brothers, Ricky Martin and Jennifer Lopez.
   "Not even my last album represents Latin music," Anthony told TV critics gathered in L.A. recently. "All the Latin artists who have come out over the past year do not represent Latin music. It's just pop music performed by Latinos."
   Anthony specializes in traditional, pure salsa music, not pop, not Latin pop, he says.
   "What I've been doing for the past nine years is something that's been around for decades and decades. But 'La Vida Loca' (Martin's hit) and 'I Need to Know' (Anthony's current hit) are not Latin music," he said.
   Anthony's musical influences growing up in East Harlem were Jose Feliciano, Ruben Blades and Santana, along with Motown stars like Marvin Gaye and Gladys Knight and the Pips. Encouraged by his musician-father, Anthony began singing as a child. He remembers being surprised at the age of 5 when a relative burst into tears as he sang a ballad at a family gathering.
   "I thought I had done something bad," he recalled. "But they explained to me that it was the singing that moved her. And my dad said that was good."
   Don't expect Ricky Martin-style pyrotechnics or shimmy-dancers on Anthony's special. The singer confesses he can't dance and that fireworks during concerts terrify him.
   "That's not what it's all about for me. That's always been distracting. It's about the songs," said Anthony. "It's about the moment. It's about music. It's not about how cute you look."
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