In what, some of us have been asking, does the putative 'dumbing down' of movies consist? I finally saw _Blown Away_ yesterday and _felt_ my reply. The movie was tense..._if_ one was willing to care about the characters. The direction was astute for creating a house of horrors (a particularly good when-will-it-blow? sequence) and various roller coasters. The acting was highly polished. I was certainly entertained but had the feeling that I was glad I'd seen this at the $1.50 retread house rather than at the $7.00 first-run theater or on my small home screen. Why? Because I had to work to care about the characters and I had to turn my brain 7/8 off to keep from being bored silly. Yes, there was a marvelous amount of frantic action, smart and quick cross-cutting, and big bombs beyond belief. But the whole movie was one long chase, based on the idea that a skilled, maniacal bomber is out for revenge against his one-time protege, now a skilled, heroic bomb squad policeman. Beyond that, everything was fast action, visual invention, and emotional manipulation. No growth; no intellectual, psychological, political, or philosophical investigation; nothing to _think_ about except, "Wow, wouldn't it be scary to be in that situation, huh?" I think the action- thriller, especially in the proverbial post-MTV world, lends itself marvelously to this cartoonishness. But action-thrillers are not alone in leaving our intellects unoccupied. As I watched _True Lies_ and _I Love Trouble_ I kept thinking that when such movies were made in the 40s, there was some wit to the dialogue, some depth of emotional involvement and change of character. But now, zip. It's as if the movies want to key us to the proper responses in the opening sequences and if that works right they want to race on through the whole without risking a different response. And action-thrillers are not alone in this. _Close Encounters_ has no dramatic conflict, just a straight-line build from miracle to miracle. Straight lines have a certain appeal. But they don't give us much to think about after a while. So we wind up talking about the techniques of film-making themselves. That's a good topic, but by no means the only one. And, for most of us, not one worth devoting every evening to. IMHO. Eric Eric Rabkin [log in to unmask] Department of English [log in to unmask] University of Michigan office : 313-764-2553 Ann Arbor MI 48109-1045 dept : 313-764-6330 deptl fax : 313-763-3128 voice msgs: 313-763-3130