Menacing Dennis

ARTS FAIR

Too much to see, too little time: V.F.'s art-stopping fall agenda

ON-SCREEN

Quaid in the shade

This month, in movie theaters all over America, you'll be seeing the same scene over and over again—I mean in the audience, not on the screen. Wherever The Big Easy is showing, female moviegoers will be watching Dennis Quaid make love to Ellen Barkin, and they will turn to the man sitting at their side, and they will sigh. Deeply. That sigh means, "Why can't you be Dennis Quaid—just for a day, a night, an hour?" It also means a star is busy being bom. Directed by Jim McBride, The Big Easy is a raffish New Orleans-set cop film with a dumb screenplay and a beguiling, loosey-goosey atmosphere—it's good fun, and Quaid walks off with it. Fast and brainy on-screen, he also has this charmingly facetious languor—even describing a gore-spattered murder victim, he can't help sweet-talking. With Innerspace behind him and Suspects (co-starring Cher) due later this fall, the sighs may prove deafening.

STEPHEN SCHIFF