The Perkins Melt

SPOTLIGHT

She looks like the snottiest girl anyone ever asked to dance. And it's not just the cigarette, the Marlene Dietrich outfit, or the'kiss-off-buster lipstick. It's that "I dare you" gaze—the icemaiden equivalent of "Go ahead, make my day." But then, that's Elizabeth Perkins's come-on. All her characters start out brittle and snide, only to melt spectacularly into the arms of the most unlikely conquistadors— slobby Jim Belushi in About Last Night..., twinkly Tom Hanks in Big, and now the dweeby high-school principal played by Jeff Daniels in the puppyish new movie Sweet Hearts Dance. The Perkins Melt—it's among the loveliest of Hollywood's obscure pleasures. Would Tom Hanks's performance in Big be so widely regarded as Oscar fodder were it not for Perkins mellowing eloquently at his side, were it not for her feathery brows going circumflex in the face of his boyish bons mots, were it not for the contrite, almost confessional way she licks an ugly gob of mustard off the corner of her mouth in the carnival scene? And even in the hapless Sweet Hearts Dance, Perkins comprehends her wee slip of a character through and through. As a schoolteacher named Adie, she's often slack-jawed, but Perkins can make a lolling mandible as seductive as her fishnets; at the bottom of her long, boxy face, slack-jawed means smart, means avid, means primed.

Which Perkins plainly is.

STEPHEN SCHIFF