Philadelphia Inquirer Review


7 Mar 1997 16:31:12 GMT

The strangely likable story of Howard Stern 
The shock jock verges on wholesome. 

By Carrie Rickey
INQUIRER MOVIE CRITIC

Since we would rather listen to four hours of the Emergency Broadcast
Network shriek than one minute of Howard Stern's radio show, it is with
some surprise that we report that Stern, the man with a face made for
radio, is a movie star. And that Private Parts, based on the self-promoting
memoir by this crude-talk jock, is irresistibly funny. 

And curiously wholesome, if you don't mind a nekkid lady or three and the
``Kielbasa Queen,'' who does things to a foot-long sausage that a
sword-swallower doesn't dare with his saber.

Stern's is an archetypal success story of the social misfit shunned for
years by his peers, who, by dint of staying true to himself (and his wife),
is -- finally -- embraced by millions.

In Private Parts, Stern (who plays himself from age 18 to age 31) is the
Ugly Duckling, the Frog Prince and Big Bird rolled into one, with a cascade
of curls that should be the envy of teenage girls and British barristers
everywhere.

While most American successes become the person who tyrannized them in
sixth grade, Stern has the courage -- or is it the arrested development? --
to remain an obnoxious 12-year-old who talks about whatever pops into his
mind or his loins. For a nation obsessed with aging, Howard Stern reassures
us that men will be boys.

Opening with the moment of Stern's greatest ignominy -- his 1992 appearance
as Fartman, the Peter Pan of flatus, flying, bare-buttocked, down a cable
at the MTV Music Awards to general disgust -- Private Parts has nowhere to
go but up.

Director Betty Thomas, who worked similar miracles with The Brady Bunch
Movie and HBO's The Late Shift, keeps the action moving at a clip. This
Rosie O'Donnell of satire maintains an affectionate tenor throughout, like
that of a parent who is tolerant, but ready to impose discipline if
necessary. In Thomas' hands, Private Parts isn't coarse, it's naughty. And
frequently touching.

Thomas and scriptwriters Len Blum and Michael Kalesniko impose form on what
some regard as Stern's shapeless rants. Given the context of his on-air
evolution from rock-and-roll huckster to circus barker of his personal
fetishisms, Stern emerges as a disgruntled employee who finds his own
voice, thereby becoming his own boss. 

Private Parts tracks Stern's progress, offering a greatest-hits version of
his stunts -- including his presentation of the first naked lady on radio.
But what makes Private Parts engaging is less Stern's ongoing on-air
variety show than it is his ongoing marriage to Alison (played with comic
forbearance by actress Mary McCormack).

Alison's demand for fidelity is responsible for the look-but-not-touch
ogling that is the basis of so much of the hear-but-not-see humor of
Stern's radio programs. His marital vows forced Stern to lust in his
imagination, that most private of private parts, and that's precisely where
he hooks his listeners.

It probably helps that Alison was a social worker whose specialty was
schizophrenics, for Stern is characterized as something of a split
personality, irresponsible and anti-authoritarian at work and Husbandman at
home.

The script is tailored to Stern's acting strengths in that most of his
actual emoting is done in a wry voice-over. While it would be stretching it
to say the camera loves him, Stern plays himself creditably, registering
more strongly on the big screen than he does on his cable-TV forays. It's
hard to say how much of this is a result of Thomas and how much of it is
the product of careful editing. But like Bob Hope and Jack Benny -- to name
two other radio stars who made it in movies -- Stern transfers his mike
persona to the camera.

On radio the lower Stern goes, the higher his ratings. On screen the lower
he goes, the higher his comedy. Only Rumpelstiltskin, who knew a thing or
two about spinning straw into gold, can explain this phenomenon. Stern is a
wizard who turns a burst of flatulence into fresh air. 

© Philadelphia Inquirer

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