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Bypass 'Kansas City'

For Robert Altman, whose advancing years could no longer be ignored, it was evidently time to indulge his formative past. The result is "Kansas City," a rose-tinted tribute to his childhood in the 1930s, when corrupt politicians and gangsters ruled by day, while jazz musicians blew and wailed in unsegregated clubs by night.

Unfortunately, Altman’s so-called "jazz memory," which stars Miranda Richardson, Harry Belafonte and that annoying Jennifer Jason Leigh, is a soulless, unmusical banality. It’s the kind of endless, self-indulgent riff that makes you want to flag down the waiter and call for your check.

In Kansas City, 1934, the desperate Blondie O’Hara (Leigh) breaks into the home of wealthy Caroline Stilton (Richardson) and holds the bewildered woman at gunpoint.

Blondie’s husband, Johnny (Dermot Mulroney), we find out, has gotten himself into very hot water. Disguised in blackface, he has robbed a black, big-time gambler who loves to spend his money at the Hey-Hey Club, a jazz and gambling joint owned by black proprietor Seldom Seen (Belafonte).

Caught by Seldom’s goons, Johnny faces double trouble: for robbing a preferred customer (an incompetent gambler who dumps a lot of money at the Hey-Hey) and attempting to lay blame on the black community. By kidnapping Caroline, Blondie hopes to coerce Caroline’s husband (Michael Murphy), a powerful political boss, into saving Johnny from certain execution.

Altman’s intentions, as always, are jazz-symphonic. While musical greats (such as "Lester Young" and "Coleman Hawkins") trade chops in "cutting contests," Seldom deliberates over Johnny’s fate, Blondie tries to keep her opium-addicted hostage out of sight, and we’re presented with a widespread tableau of real American society. But there’s nothing to be found beyond this picture’s self-intoxicated intentions—neither deep nor titillating, neither touching nor amusing. Even the "period atmosphere" (basically, the cars, suits and buildings) seems superficial and tacked on.

The acting—normally the saving grace in an Altman picture—is one of the movie’s worst elements. Richardson’s ethereal, buzzed-out performance (as Caroline, she’s a hopeless laudanum addict) outweighs Leigh’s fussy little acting tics, but neither really commands our attention. Belafonte is always a pleasure to watch. (It’s that hoary head and reedy voice.) But he’s saddled by a script (written by Altman and Frank Barhydt), that bestows him with the single trait of indecision.

The director, whose satirical, iconoclastic sensibility played well in the early 1970s (when anything cynical, nihilistic, underground or countercultural amounted to hipness) has become reduced, these days, to pretending he has something to say. The most penetrating insight in "Pret-a-Porter," his satire about the fashion world in Paris? That no one in haute couture—high or low—can avoid stepping in the city’s ubiquitous dog poop. In "Kansas City," he manages to sink even lower. This time, it’s the director who steps in something—his own mediocrity.

KANSAS CITY (R) — Contains profanity, some violence, sexual situations and drug use.