UNDERCOVER BLUES (Directed by Herbert Ross. Starring Kathleen Turner, Dennis Quaid, Fiona Shaw)

There is another husband and wife detective team in Undercover Blues, this time with a baby on board. Dennis Quaid and Kathleen Turner may be younger and prettier than Woody and Diane, but they don’t have the classy dialogue and, on this evidence, wouldn’t know what to do with it anyway. They both looked set for superstardom, but are beginning to take on the desperate air of also rans. Why else run the risk of being upstaged by a baby?

Dennis and Kathleen play a pair of retired superspies who are called in by the CIA when world peace is once again threatened by a Bondian megalomaniac. Their main operating ploy is to engage in pseudo-sophisticated banter in the face of danger, but Quaid’s perpetual smile is starting to take on the dimensions of an ingratiating, shit-eating leer, and Turner will have to do more than shed a few pounds to regain weight in the acting division. The only mercy is that the baby is mainly kept under wraps.