The Runner Stumbles

The appeal of Kramer's consistent line in numbing worthiness (Judgment at Nuremberg, Ship of Fools, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?) has always been to those who like their popcorn heavily salted. A veteran auteur-for-all-issues, he now comes up with this irrelevantly monumental crisis-of-faith movie, in which Father Dick Van Dyke (as close to Hamlet as he'll ever get) finds himself on trial for the murder of young nun Kathleen Quinlan, over whom he's been getting increasingly hot under the dog-collar. Deadly earnestness over Van Dyke's tortured celibacy becomes risible long before the Perry Mason conclusion and a final scene of indescribable bathos. Now perhaps if Sidney Poitier had played the role...