Wilder (Arliss Howard) and Wallace Foudroyant (Dennis Quaid) are pyrokinetic brothers. They have kept their abilities a secret since their childhood when they accidentally killed a vagrant. Wilder is a button down Kwik Foto booth worker, volunteer firefighter with pyromaniac wife Vida (Debra Winger) who is under trailer arrest. She accidentally carelessly set a fire. Wallace is a clown in a traveling circus with friend Rex (Jim Varney). The circus comes to town and Wallace gets in between Wilder and Vida. Wallace wants to use his powers on the David Letterman show. The brothers haven't seen each other since Wallace burned Wilder's hair off when Wilder married Vida.

The movie is trying to be a wacky weird rom-com and a dysfunctional family drama. I like Debra Winger throwing caution to the winds. She comes closest to actually getting a laugh. However I don't think Arliss Howard is big enough to anchor the movie. Dennis Quaid is wacky dark. I don't think the chemistry works at all. It's Vince Gilligan's first credit and I understand the idea behind his script. It's an off-center rom-com and dysfunctional brotherly relationship. The dialog isn't actually sharp and it's not funny. It's a little odd but nothing more.

Blazing saddles! It's a fight between two estranged brothers (Dennis Quaid and Arliss Howard),both of whom can ignite fires mentally; they square off over childhood differences, with dippy love-interest Debra Winger caught in the middle. Director Glenn Gordon Caron (the TV whiz-kid behind "Moonlighting") smothers the darkly-textured comedy in Vince Gilligan's screenplay with a presentation so slick, the movie resembles an entry from an over-enthusiastic film student on a fifteen million-dollar grant. It has the prickly energy of a big commercial feature, but a shapeless style which brings out nothing from the characters except their kooky eccentricities. These aren't even characters, they're plot functions. Barely-released to theaters, the film is a disaster, although strictly as an example of style over substance it does look good. Winger is the only stand-out in a cast which looks truly perplexed. *1/2 from ****

Good special effects and spectacular pyrotechnics fight against a long, pointless, tiresome story (there is a sequence in the movie that's a good metaphor for it - a character drives a lawnmower machine round and round and round without going anywhere). The cast is talented, but some "quirky" touches (the singing firemen) add little. I must mention that Debra Winger had guts to do the diving-from-the-roof-back-first stunt - and I'm 99% certain it was really her doing it. ** out of 4.