Dial File: Tele-Pack lacks the Rat knack

Thursday, Aug. 20, 1998 | 9:33 a.m.

BUMMER, baby.

If they were still here to frolic in their neon Never-Neverland, Frank might bust me in the chops, Dino might disown me as a "pallie," Sammy might sing "What Kind of Fool Am I," Peter might bar me from Call Girl & Pizza Night at the Kennedy compound and Joey might call me a "son-of-a-gun" (wait, Joey's still around ... consider me son-of-a-gunned down).

On the other hand ... They might buy me a bourbon and get me a broad (sorry, ladies, but when in Rome ...) for being disappointed by HBO's "The Rat Pack" -- and for wishing they'd made a whole movie about Sammy Davis Jr. instead.

As embodied by Don Cheadle, Davis -- answering racism with showmanship while enduring the racial needling of fellow Rat Packers to blaze a path for other black performers to follow -- is the soul of an otherwise by-the-numbers bio of five bad boys on an extended bender.

Now it's true that TV movie reviews aren't usual fodder for this column, but hey, it's The Rat Pack, cats! -- How's your bird, Clyde? Ain't it a gasser? That chick's coo-coo, baby! How'd all you people get in my living room? (lay off the vino, Dino). Splitsville, man.

RING-A-DING-DING!!!! ... Whoa ... Now that the Rat Pack essence is ebbing from my system, let's examine what "The Rat Pack" lacks -- namely, the Rat Pack essence. But of course you're dying to know: How do Ray, Joe, Don, Angus and Bobby fare as Frank, Dean, Sammy, Peter and Joey? Just fine, as long as you're content with Rat Pack approximation rather than duplication -- and I am. They're not the problem.

That dishonor goes to the script, which is consumed with scrupulously documenting every burp and hiccup of the Pack's colorful, controversial reign -- most notably, its involvement in the Kennedy campaign and the tense triangle between the emerging Camelot, Sinatra and mobster Sam "Momo" Giancana. Well, almost every burp: Sinatra's fabled loss of teeth to Carl Cohen's fist is curiously absent.

The upshot is a can't-see-the-forest-for-the-trees tale that lands way wide of the real target: to capture that lightning in a bottle born of their unique five-way chemistry, uncorking an intoxicating screw-you voodoo that briefly but boldly bewitched a nation.

Yes their ravenous appetites are recorded -- on stage, at the gaming tables, at the bar and in bed (Marilyn Monroe, Ava Gardner and Kennedy/ Giancana tattletale Judith Campbell all show up). But the Pack's hedonistic juice seems steamed out of the meat of the script, as if caught between the hell-bent truth and a be-kind-to-icons compromise. The script also suffers from abruptness. Told in flashback, the flick opens with a 74-year-old Sinatra missing "my guys," but doesn't come full-circle at the close. The ending is like stepping off a cliff.

There are no impersonations among the performances and the flick is better off that way. Mimicry is a self-conscious gimmick -- best left to impressionists -- and a barrier to storytelling; viewers are diverted from character and story development by the details of the impression. Acting, in this case, is about re-creating the aura of these guys and building believable characters, real or imagined. This the actors do individually, even while the script fails them collectively.

Ray Liotta swings -- with his voice and his fists -- as Sinatra. The ex-"Goodfella" radiates Sinatra's volatile charisma. And by modulating his mesmerizing look-out-he-could-blow-at-any-minute! electricity -- taken to extremes in his other roles as bona fide movie nutjobs -- Liotta's a hand-in-glove fit as Sinatra in his crooning, boozing, brawling, womanizing prime.

Joe Mantegna turns in memorable work as Dean Martin, fleshing out a detached, devil-may-care pleasure seeker who, within this hell-raising collective, reveals a curiously moral, individualistic streak. Like a cynical sage, he seems to know that this party's going to end, even if his "pallies" don't. The physical discrepancies between Mantegna and Martin are irrelevant -- the actor becomes the role.

As Peter Lawford, Angus Macfadyen is sadly believable as an elegant-but-aimless fop, a Sinatra sycophant who grows irritated with his Rat Pack role as a dutiful errand boy between Kennedy-smitten Frank and Lawford's brother-in-law, JFK (played by William Peterson).

"I'm an actor -- all I want is to act and cheat on my wife," Lawford tells Sinatra with a sort of weary, defeated insight into his own empty character. But Sinatra brutally boots him from the Pack over a hurtful JFK snub -- the famed bypassing of Sinatra's home for Bing Crosby's for a presidential visit.

As Joey Bishop, Bobby Slayton hardly registers an impression -- but you can hardly fault him, battling a script that throws him a couple of punchlines but virtually no recognition as the writer of the Rat Pack's on-stage shtick.

And then there's Sammy, a rabble-rousing Rat Packer to be sure, but also the black punchline in a white stand-up act. And the one whose humiliation was more painfully pronounced than Frank's Kennedy-triggered tantrum and Lawford's self-destructive narcissism.

Cheadle repeatedly reveals Sammy's shame: the quick, concealed grimace as Frank's watermelon gags fly onstage; his quiet distress after the Democratic convention, where he's been booed by Southern delegates; postponing his interracial marriage to cool the political heat on JFK and Frank; his swallowed pride after his casting as a singing garbageman in "Oceans Eleven."

Sammy the stooge.

The film's highlight: Dwarfed by a towering, neon-lit racial slur -- as if the old Sands sign had been transplanted to a Mississippi backwater -- a furiously tap-dancin' Sammy tries to turn the wrath of racists into respect through the sheer force of his talent. Was he an "Uncle Tom" or the Jackie Robinson of modern show biz? Well, that's another movie.

But, individually, that moment distills the essence of Sammy -- something that, collectively, "The Rat Pack" fails to do for The Rat Pack.

That leaves it stranded in Nowheresville, baby.

CROON A TUNE: What do you do when you're "Branded" and you know you're a man? Well, you immediately dial up Dial File to prove your manhood. And, curiously enough, this week's winner list was an exercise in male bonding -- no female readers even attempted this one:

"All but one man died, there at Bitter Creek, and they say he ran away. ... (Series title), marked by the coward's shame." DAN RYAN was the man's man who led the testosterone charge as the first reader to ID the theme to "Branded." And a snappy salute to these other Dial File Men of Honor who knew that theme:

Rich Collins, Andrew Hatcher, Joe Lacy (who quipped: "Thank you, because now I can't turn that song off"-- sorry, Joe), Darrin Nelson (who sang the theme so well that he ought to get a royalty check), John Paine and Daniel W. Roberts (who reminded me of the childish goof on this theme: "Stranded, stuck on the toilet bowl ...")

This week, Croon-a-Tune goes audio as we welcome instrumental TV themes into the mix and inaugurate a new telephone line: Call 259-4012 (it will pick up after the fourth ring) to hear this week's quiz theme. Then leave your guess, the spelling of your name and a daytime phone number. If you're voice mail shy, you can still e-mail your answer.

As always, the name of the first correct caller/e-mailer will be highlighted here, and all other readers who nail it will also be listed.

Ready ... Set ... L-I-S-T-E-N!

DEVANE REFRAIN: Always known for his refreshing (unless you're the target of it) honesty, diplomacy-impaired actor William Devane struck again when asked by a reporter how he resists the temptation to pray for another show's failure so his own waiting-in-the-wings effort ("Turks") can get a time slot.

"You don't," he said. "You're in there rooting for somebody to go down. Whaddaya think -- we're crazy?"

Despite his remarkable range, I can't recall Devane ever being asked to play a diplomat.

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