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‘Burglar’
By Richard Harrington
Washington Post Staff Writer
March 27, 1987
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Consider this a "Burglar" alarm: Whatever you pay for this dreadful little film, you've been robbed."Burglar" is another weak vehicle for Whoopi Golberg, a comedian who is quickly wearing out her welcome in Hollywood by insisting on playing herself. Her cat burglar, Bernice Rhodenbarr, is based on Lawrence Block's sophisticated Bernie Rhodenbarr. But Goldberg can't decide whether to play Bernie for laughs or pathos, and the result is a flat, vapid character who likes easy money but whose motivation and modus operandi are totally uninvolving. It doesn't help that the story line is unfocused and absurd (a trio of writers, including director Hugh Wilson, borrowed disparate elements from the original Block books, and the film ends up simply incoherent). Bernie, bookseller by day, burglar by night, is being blackmailed by a retired cop gone bad (G.W. Bailey as Ray Kirshmann, who just wants some cash and a fur coat for his wife). She gets talked into a jewelry job, but stumbles into a murder, for which she's quickly framed. What plot there is centers on Bernie's efforts to clear her name so she can get back to burgling. But the story is little more than a pretext for cataloguing bits: Goldberg disguised as a geriatric domestic, Goldberg doing various ethnic accents, Goldberg talking tough and dirty. If it's not Goldberg, it's her sidekick Bob Goldthwaite, cast as Bernie's poodle-grooming pal but basically playing his hyperkinetic self as well. Lesley Ann Warren contributes her own histrionic shtick as a dizzy dentist who's also suspected of murder. Heck, Wilson ("Police Academy," "Rustler's Rhapsody") even turns to that last resort of the uninspired director, a high-speed car chase through the streets of San Francisco in the company of cinematographer William Fraker, who did it much better the first time around in "Bullitt." As Bernie says at one point, "It's not what you steal, it's who you steal from" -- but you wish Wilson and Co. had spent as much time on the script as they must have on this laborious sequence. "Burglar" is obviously less a film than a star vehicle. A few more like this, though, and Goldberg may have to change her name to Whoops! "Burglar" is rated "R" and contains explicit language and some violence.
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