Options

Year releasted: 1988

by Nathan Rabin
December 17th, 2003

Holden Caulfield, the antihero of J.D. Salinger's The Catcher In The Rye, rails at length about how actors are horrible phonies, but maybe he would have felt differently had he foreseen the day when his creator's son, Matt Salinger, would appear in a comedy boasting guest appearances from Bobby Unser, Susan Anton, and Eric Roberts. In Options, Salinger stars as a hotshot agent whose home-base location is subtly established by shots of the Hollywood sign, the Capitol Records building, the Hollywood Bowl, the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and a man selling maps to the stars. In case there's any lingering doubt about where Salinger lives and works, an L.A. radio DJ enthuses about how a "new breed of so-called yuppie executives" working in television and film have been making record profits for their corporate masters through their canny decisions. Salinger is not one of those executives, but he is a "so-called yuppie" agent who specializes in buying the TV-movie rights to the lives of interesting people. Joanna Pacula plays one such person, a Belgian princess who's studying elephants in Africa, and who's blessed with what one of Salinger's creepy colleagues dubs "pillow lips." (Though it's unclear why Salinger would listen to a colleague who sinisterly confides, "I'd stab myself in the back to get ahead.") The uptight Salinger travels to Africa, where he and Pacula meet cute when she accidentally shoots him with a tranquilizer dart meant for an elephant. Shockingly, she seems uninterested in having her life turned into a TV-movie vehicle for Anton, and she forces Salinger to return to Hollywood empty-handed. He gets his second chance, however, when Pacula is kidnapped. Like any successful agent, Salinger is more than willing to risk his own life when a Susan Anton TV-movie deal hangs in the balance, and with his assistance, Pacula escapes from her kidnappers—but not before signing an "unprecedented" half-million-dollar deal for the rights to her story. Back in Hollywood, Salinger illustrates his emotional growth by tearing up his hard-won contract, marrying Pacula, and returning to Africa, a "so-called yuppie" no more.