Rushes

STROKER ACE

This is the latest model of what might be termed the Burt Reynolds Formula One Vehicle. The sometime bandit is a respectable NASCAR driver in Stroker Ace. That means that the skids and scrapes in which he defies death without losing his good-ole-boy aplomb take place on such premises as the Daytona 500 race track. He is also amiably mystified to find himself drawn to a woman (Loni Anderson) who is as tenacious in defense of her virginity as he is in pursuit of a championship. That, however, completes the list of the film's novelties. As usual, many brawls and gags are thrown in. Reynolds makes these films with a group of good buddies, and as outtakes of on-set goof-offs run over the credits show, they have fun. But the products increasingly resemble the snapshots that guys pass around when they return from a fishing trip. You can almost hear: "Well, you really have to have been there. . ."

PUBERTY BLUES

Australian Director Bruce Beresford approaches the adolescent surfing culture of a Sydney suburb as if he were an anthropologist and his subjects were an exotic outback tribe. But the somewhat distant and objective manner that served so effectively to dehydrate his Tender Mercies fails him here. Two girls (prettily played by Nell Schofield and Jad Capelja) scheme to gain admission to the gang, win acceptance and then at last outgrow the group. The tale is not told with great dramatic intensity. Nor is it really as strange and shocking as Beresford seems to think it is. Indeed, to jaded American eyes these teen-agers are rather mild, old-fashioned and languid in manner. As a result, the film is something of a throwback, as if it might have been called Gidget Meets the Heck's Angels.

ONE DEADLY SUMMER

With her pouty face and magnificently sleek body, Isabelle Adjani looks like a Barbie doll grown up and gone bad. At 28, she has become the divine masochist of the French cinema, playing Truffaut's Adele H., or a woman who gives birth to a monster in Possession. This time Adjani has turned on her siren to play a troubled tramp in a village in southern France. In a cartoon of lust, she sashays provocatively down the main street, shimmies at the local dance, strides naked through backyards--all because of some dreadful childhood demons that take Director Jean Becker 2 hr. 10 min. to exorcise. The movie stinks, but Adjani makes it sizzle. With One Deadly Summer this French Barbie should find her way into the closets of many more overage little boys. This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.