August 5, 1988 | Jeff Goldblum, an oversized praying mantis with a perpetually befuddled air, and Cyndi Lauper, a peroxided kewpie doll with an impish Noo Yawk snarl, make an aptly off-beat couple in Vibes, an engagingly off-the-wall comedy written by the Splash! team of Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel.
Loony and lightweight, the film deals with psychics and supernatural doings, and is best when it plays both elements for laughs. In the final reel, director Ken Kwapis relies too heavily on the shimmering-light special effects of Richard Edlund (Ghostbusters), and the movie takes a turn into dismayingly familiar territory. By that time, however, the nifty cast has generated enough good will to help Vibes get across this shaky ground.
Peter Falk also is on hand, offering another variation on the cheery, transparently phony con man he essayed so comically in The In-Laws. He is just as raffishly amusing here as Harry Buscafusco, an affable smooth-talker who claims to need paranormal help to find his missing son in the wilds of Ecuador. He employs two psychics, who should know better, and the adventure begins.
Goldblum is Nick Deezy, the more sobersided of the psychics Harry hires. Nick, a discontent museum curator, is a psychometrist, which means he can hold an object and tell where it’s been, and who else has held it. The ability comes in handy: He grabs a piece of his girlfriend’s underclothing, and immediately knows she’s been unfaithful.
But even a psychometrist like Nick doesn’t know what to make of a foreign object like Sylvia Pickel (Lauper), a ditzy, man-chasing medium who always falls for the wrong guy, despite the sage advice of her spiritual contact on The Other Side. “All men are the same,” she says with a knowing smile. Then, in a slightly more honest tone, she adds: “It’s just that some of them have prison records, and some of them don’t.” You don’t have to be a psychic to know which kind she usually attracts.
For a long time, all Vibes has to do to make its audience laugh is take the three stars, mix them vigorously, and watch them simmer.
Nick, something of a prude, wonders if Sylvia has any dress with a hemline “lower than mid-bosom.” Sylvia is a good sport, for the most part, and she takes compliments about her paranormal abilities in stride. “You’re fantastic,” says a psychic researcher. “Yeah, I’m told that a lot,” she replies. “But then they never call me in the morning.”
For his own part, Harry tries to maintain an air of hearty optimism, long after his deceptions are seen through. Even after Nick is attacked by a femme fatale, and Sylvia assumes, rightly, that a gang is behind the assault, Harry remains upbeat. “Well, you know, there are good gangs,” he says. “I mean, there was Our Gang, with Alfalfa . . .”
The three stars evidently had a great time together on location in Ecuador, and much of their spirited give-and-take has the freshness of on-the-spot improvisation. The merriment slows a bit after Falk is written out of the story. But his co-stars pick up the slack in their own fashion.
Lauper, the perky pop star who just wants to have fun, makes her big-screen debut with all the sweetly daffy charm she brings to her music videos. Goldblum, who’s nicely recovered from Robert Altman’s horrible Beyond Therapy, plays Nick with just enough neurotic intensity to enhance, not undercut, the humor of the character. And believe it or not, when these two launch into a tango, they strike a few erotic sparks during their graceful mating dance.
Chief among the supporting players are Julian Sands (A Room With a View) as a psychic researcher, Elizabeth Pena as a knife-wielding mystery lady, Googy Gress as a surly rival psychic, and Steve Buscemi as a two-timing sleazeball who coaxes Sylvia into picking a few winners at the racetrack. The production values are everything they should be, and Lauper performs a bouncy pop tune under the closing credits that should send you out smiling.
