Goldblum’s Funny but Romantic ‘Guy’

When Dexter King, a marginal, 40-year-old American actor working in London, loses his job as a straight man for a popular comedian, it’s actually a good career move. After six years of wearing a tutu and getting smacked upside the head during slapstick routines, what other kind of move could it be?

Dexter finds work immediately, in the leading role of a full-blown musical. Sure, it’s an ill-conceived musical based on the life of the Elephant Man in which Dexter wears a mask and drools. But at least he’s not in a tutu.

Jeff Goldblum plays Dexter, the title role of “The Tall Guy,” a light and very funny romantic comedy that suggests that even a clumsy fellow with a plastic trunk hanging from his face can find love.

On a visit to his doctor’s office, Dexter is smitten by a nurse. His landlady advises him that if he wants to get the girl he “must behave like a perfect bastard. Take her out on a date, then never call her again.” The landlady, a happy nymphomaniac whose frequent male visitors invariably tour the house sans clothing, theorizes that there are only two kinds of men in the world, spineless wimps and bastards, and that only the latter get anywhere with women.

But Dexter, a first-order wimp with a serious vertebra deficiency, instead devises a plan to meet nurse Kate (Emma Thompson) by submitting to the painful, weekly allergy shots she administers.

Thompson and Goldblum complement each other well: He plays Dexter with spasmodic fits of emotion, while her Kate is marked by typical English reserve and understatement. British comedian Rowan Atkinson also is excellent as the pompous and egotistical comic who fires Dexter for being funny on stage.

One of the best parts of the movie is the musical in which Dexter stars, called “Elephant.” The show is wonderfully awful, bringing to mind the old “Bad Theater” sketches on “Saturday Night Live” in which Dan Aykroyd would applaud such wretched productions as an opera based on the inventor of the microscope. “Elephant,” from the same cracked mold, is full of such songs as “He’s Packing His Trunk” and such lyrics as “somewhere in heaven there’s an angel with big ears.” The only serious flaw with “The Tall Guy” is that it’s too short.

“The Tall Guy” (1990), directed by Mel Smith. 92 minutes. Rated R.