Brenda Starr

After starring in hits like Pretty Baby, The Blue Lagoon, and Endless Love, Brooke Shields set out to show the world that she was more than just a sexy, young starlet. Unfortunately she hooked her star to the producing team of Golan Globus. These are the same movie titans responsible for Bolero, The Apple, and most of the Chuck Norris library. Her first outing with the duo was the box office flop Sahara.This featured Ms. Shields racing cars in the desert. Next up was a movie that the Golan Globus team actually lost control of during production, 1989's Brenda Starr.

Shields takes on the title role, the scrappy, comic strip, female reporter who always gets her story. After her illustrator, Tony Peck, gets bored with his lot in life, Starr decides to quit herself, forcing the artist to draw himself into her comic, and in the process, becomes a key player in one of her adventures.

Is Brenda Starr a good movie? Well, no. Despite Shields trying her best, she is sorely miscast in the lead. If you've ever read the comic strip, Starr had a maturity to her that Shields just didn't have at this time in her career. She definitely has the plucky charm, and maybe if she would have waited another five years, she might have nailed it. Sadly, this was a passion project for her and still to this day she say's that it's one of her favorite roles. She might as well waited since the film ended sitting on a shelf for three years before it's release. This was due to the fact that Golan and Globus didn't have the rights for the character, one of the many reasons they backed out of the production. And once they weren't involved, the movie had no studio to release it. It was filmed in 1986, but it didn't see the light of day until 1989, and that was just overseas. It didn't reach American screens until 1992. And it bombed horribly.

Even though it's not a great movie by any means, it's a shame it wasn't released earlier. It would have been released before Batman and Dick Tracy, which I always thought Starr was kind of a female version of. If it would have actually hit theaters in 86 it might have come off as looking somewhat original.

Another problem with Starr is the supporting cast. Don't get me wrong, it's a terrific group that includes Timothy Dalton, Diana Scarwid, Jeffrey Tambor, Eddie Albert, and Charles Durning. Here's the problem, some of the actors, like Dalton, play the film straight. While others, like Scarwid, see the campiness of it and ham it up. Since the actors approach the material in different ways it makes it hard for it to find the right tone.

Brenda Starr is worth a look if you're a fan of the comic book genre. But in all honesty, you're better off watching Dick Tracy.

It's available on dvd.