Daily News from New York, New York • 45

rjtdafc November 8, 19913 tirtlivl 1 i vA? i -rr a MOVIES PMEOTS C3E(EIR7E DF1T imiiiL Few ALL I WANT FDR CHRISTMAS. Harley Jane Kozak, Jamey Sheridan. Directed by Robert Lieberman. At area theaters. Running time: 92 mins.

Rated G. Hills as a stand-in for Macy's. The movie was filmed in such an apparent hurry that no one ever bothers to explain the presence of a pregnant woman, comedian Andrea Martin, who chatters away in a mysterious accent while hanging around a posh townhouse. The townhouse RANDON TARTI- koff, the new chairman tJ of the Paramount Pic tures Corporation, thinks movies should be i belongs to "the second lady of the American theater," Lillian Brooks, played by Lauren Bacall, who, thank heavens, is not the usual sugarplum of a grandmother. Lillian has been sharing her spacious home with her granddaughter Hallie (Thora more cost-efficient.

To prove his point, he has delivered the Hollywood equivalent of a stocking-stuff-er in time for the holidays. Not surprisingly, the former high-powered television executive's first Paramount project is "All I Want For KATHLEEN CARROLL L-- ii mlT frMff-i' La TALL ORDER: Leslie Nielsen as Macy's Santa, responds to a Christmas request from Thora Birch. Birch) and her preppie adolescent grandson Ethan (Ethan Randall) ever since her daughter Catherine (Harley Jane Kozak) got divorced. Catherine's marriage broke up when her husband, Michael O'Fallon (Jamey Sheridan), bought himself a diner. "The kids love the diner," argues O'Fallon.

"They understand why I would drop-kick our little yuppie lifestyle to do something that would give me pleasure." Maybe it's lines like this that explain why Catherine is threatening to marry a Wall Street broker who's such a Christmas," a mildly entertaining children's fantasy with the cookie-cutter look of a TV movie. The setting is ritzy Manhattan, but the pre-fabricated movie was shot in supposedly record time on a Hollywood sound stage. The sets are so quaintly artificial that when Hallie, the 7-year-old heroine, primly rushes off alone clutching her fur muff for a last-minute conference with Macy's Santa Claus, you know she will be spared the wrath of anti-fur activists. They even have the nerve to use the I. Magnin store in Beverly counselor." Eventually, he devises a plan to help things along.

It involves stuffing his mother's intended into a Ben and Jerry's ice cream truck (a blatant commercial plug if ever there was oneX The performances are not especially memorable. The featured players, a few white mice, qualify as show-stoppers. Leslie Nielsen does the sit- down role of Santa Claus, but he only succeeds in reminding one of a truly enchanting children's fantasy, "Miracle on 34th Street" In that movie, Edmund Gwenn was so endearingly warmhearted as-Macy's Santa, you actually believe he could perform such impossible tasks as saving the marriage of a yuppie princess and a diner owner. hopeless nerd he boasts of having house seats for the long-, running Broadway hit "Cats." The movie's basic premise is appealing. Hallie, faced with the prospect of having this hateful bore for a stepfather, asks Santa to reunite her parents.

Santa is understandably bewildered by this "tall order." Ethan warns Hallie that Santa Claus is "not a marriage 1 'fappie leu' V2 STRICTLY BUSINESS. Tommy Davidson, Joseph C. Phillips, Anne Marie Johnson. Directed by Kevin Hooks. At area theaters.

Running time: 83 mins. Rated PG-13. which showed millions of TV viewers a spectrum of'many different black professionals, all speaking for themselves. Yet, there is a persistent view that some mystical reality known as the "street experience" is what authenticates a black in America, and that a black professional a corporate executive, OME OF MY COL- I leagues on the opinion pages deplored the Thomas-Hill hearings be YUPPING IT UP: Tommy Davidson, Joseph C. Phillips and Halle Berry (from in "Strictly say is somehow not quite authentically black.

This view is examined in Kevin Hooks' "Strictly Business," a comedy that contains some challenging implications. The movie jTr WiiiM aimimi1 cause they presented two black urban professionals at war with one another. White professionals are at war with each other every day, and nobody thinks to write an op-ed column about them. But in the minds of these Seen as entertainment, "Strictly Business" is passably fun, and effectively acted by Davidson, Phillips and Berry, who generate their characters with a lot of energy. Seen as a marker in the field of pop culture, the movie may represent a turning-point like the Thomas-Hill hearings.

Here, as. there, black professionals are no longer willing to suppress their own personal opinions in order to reflect current po- Iitical orthodoxy. Ten years ago, this movie would have ended with the executive getting a big laugh by using a familiar 12-letter word. "Strictly Business" ends with the kid putting on a man, not even Waymon, could be as uncoordinated on a dance floor as he seems to be). But beneath the plot, which is routine, are a lot of assumptions that are not The movie questions the notion that black "authenticity" is only to be found on tUe streets or in clubs, in rap music or high-fives.

There is a reality here in which young Bobby can indeed get a trainee position and start climbing the corporate ladder and Bobby likes that idea. Cleverly and subtly, the movie undercuts the negativity of dozens of black movies which taught that the only correct stance toward the white corporate world was to from Harlem, come from different worlds. Then, lightning strikes when Waymon sees the beautiful Natalie (Halle Berry), dreams of dating her, and discovers that Bobby knows her, and wilLarrange an introduction in return for a step up the corporate ladder. Waymon immediately agrees, setting in motion a plot that takes him on a tour of the black urban culture he has avoided up until now. Along the way, there is a comedy plot involving unscrupulous real-estate investors, a skyscraper that may or may not get sold, and the beautiful Natalie.

There are moments that work, and oth- 33 stars Joseph C. Phillips (Bill Cosby's TV son-in-law) as Way- ROGER EBERT columnists, any black is thought to represent all blacks t- and so it creates a "bad image" when two of them disagree publicly. This opinion is silly. It reflects a narrow view of the diversity of black people in America so narrow, it does mon, a fast-rising young executive in a big Manhattan real-estate firm. Tommy Davidson (from "In Living Color) plays Bobby, a mailroom clerk who dreams of being promoted to a trainee position one day.

But Waymon, who is Ivy not perceive the real image that dp not (no young reject it suit and tie..