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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