Bottled 'Blonde' By Stephen Hunter Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, March 13, 1998

Daryl Hannah (front) is one of the stars of "The Real Blonde." (Paramount)

It's set among those with nice ridged abs, no excess avoirdupois blurring their jaws, plenty of thick stuff up top, verifiable cheekbones and teeth like Dentyne ads. In other words, the intersection of youth, beauty and ambition known as the modeling and acting professions on the isle of Manhattan.

Directed by Tom DiCillo, whose best work is the parody of independent filmmaking called "Living in Oblivion," this film tries for the same broad comic approach but somehow never manages to make its characters anything other than cartoons.

Basically, it follows two couples, who intertwine both professionally and privately over the course of a month or so. The two guys are actors and the two young women are in the fashion industry. It's a kind of roundelay of beauty, ambition, luck and pluck, in which these four move through the culture of the professionally beautiful and keep encountering the same people.

Matthew Modine plays Joe, who wants seriously to act; his girlfriend is Mary (Catherine Keener), who is the makeup assistant to an obnoxious fashion photographer (Marlo Thomas, brassy as a tuba). On the other side of the movie is Joe's friend Bob (Maxwell Caulfield), a more successful actor (he's got a soap) who slides through beauties a little too easily. He begins and ultimately ends with a beautiful though shallow model named Sahara (played by Bridgette Wilson).

As my friend Rick Blaine would say, the problems of these four people don't amount to a hill of beans in this world. Still, the game of musical beds that Bob plays and the game of desperately-seeking-stardom that Joe plays have amusing moments both, and the movie as a whole suggests that being professionally beautiful is no picnic.

Among others in the cast are Elizabeth Berkley, Christopher Lloyd, Buck Henry, Daryl Hannah and Kathleen Turner. What do they have in common? A) They're all attractive and talented? B) The women are blond and the men are bald? or C) Their careers are all in a downward cycle? D) All of the above.

"The Real Blonde" is rated R for sexual situations and conversations.