A last gasp from the dreaded brat pack

boiled.'' There are times in Dennis, John (Home Alone) Hughes's latest

sadistic romp for tiny tots when Walter Matthau looks as if he would opt

for deep fried for Mason Gamble, the golden-haired brat aspiring to

Macaulay Culkin's crown who plays the title role, while Arnold

Schwarzenegger looks even less keen about Austin O'Brien as a

street-wise kid called Danny in Last Action Hero.

The film's basic idea is sound, but the reek of script writers'

midnight oil hangs heavy as Schwarzenegger comes the sort of cropper

that befalls superstars who, determined to prove themselves, abandon

what they are good at. Schwarzenegger is Sergeant Jack Slater of the Los

Angeles Police Department, a celluloid hero in the -- well, Stallone

mould, let us say, Danny, a fatherless New York kid, is Slater's biggest

fan always sneaking off to see his films.

Art Carney, the cute old projectionist at Danny's local flea pit,

gives him a magic ticket which transports him into the thick of the

action in the latest Slater film. We have, of course, been here before

with Woody Allen's wistful romantic comedy, Purple Rose of Cairo, in

which Mia Farrow's browbeaten wife escaped from the gloom of the

Depression into the silver screen.

Like Danny she was mad about the boy in every single scene, but Allen

kept reality and illusion in perfect balance, whereas Last Action Hero

ignores the ruthless logic demanded by this kind of fantasy tale.

The film opens with Slater's latest blockbuster, but sends it up, a

fatal mistake from which it never recovers because what we see is so

bad. Slater's films could never have made it to even one sequel, let

alone four. If the ''dream'' is fake, then one cannot mingle it with

reality and the joke about how the rules of the celluloid world cannot

apply in the real world does not work. In the film's ''real'' world

Slater, who gets to make the reverse trip along with the obligatory

English celluloid villain, Charles Dance, still behaves like a fantasy

hero, as does the villain.

Last Action Hero also opts for movie jokes which are surely above the

heads of the target teenage audience. Joan Plowright, Danny's teacher,

tells her class about Hamlet, shows a clip from Olivier's film and

declares: ''Some of you may remember him from the Polaroid commercial

and Last of the Titans.'' Danny, annoyed at the Dane's indecisiveness

imagines how Slater would handle the situation -- cue for

Schwarzenegger's Prince of Denmark putting Elsinore to rights. That is

funny, but you need to know who she is to get the point.

O'Brien's knowing sleazeball of a kid is one of the best arguments

ever put on screen for birth control, while Schwarzenegger, who does not

have a funny bone in his body, flounders, out of his depth in these

unaccustomed shallow comic waters. Hudson Hawk lives.

John Hughes gives his mastery of slapstick full rein in Dennis which

is about a Menace, although not the one in the Dundee comics but an

American cartoon kid drawn by Hank Ketcham. He is a six-year-old forever

in trouble who makes the life of his grouchy next-door neighbour, old Mr

Wilson, a misery.

Hughes has clearly gone to the Just William books for inspiration as

Dennis's girlfriend is a dead ringer for Violet Elizabeth Bott, but

mostly he has just rehashed the Home Alone formula so that the slapstick

involving Matthau as Mr Wilson is kindly, while that involving

Christopher Lloyd as a sinister burglar invading Norman Rockwell Land,

in which the story is set, is pure sadism.

Dennis is at its best when Matthau, whose face has collapsed into a

miracle of juddering jowls and dyspeptic dewlaps, does his celebrated

impersonation of a man in whom the milk of human kindness has curdled,

except that underneath he is really an old softy, but Gamble's little

rascal is too simperingly cute for comfort. Whatever it was Culkin, also

a Hughes protege, has, Gamble lacks.

Joan Plowright, who is certainly getting the Hollywood work, plays

Matthau's long-suffering, loving wife. Although Dennis is great fun, it

suffers from the lack of a child star the audience can empathise with.

Matthau is simply matchless.

In Mad Dog and Glory, Robert De Niro sheds his Mr Nasty image to play

the good guy, a shy cop ironically dubbed Mad Dog by his colleagues.

After saving the life of a club-owning gangster, Bill Murray in another

piece of casting against type, he is rewarded by being given a week with

Glory, the club hat check girl played by Uma Thurman. They fall in love.

Well they would, wouldn't they? A furious Murray, who has other ideas,

is only stopped in his tracks after he and Mad Dog slug it out

John-Wayne-Quiet-Man-fashion.

Casting the two male leads in the more obvious roles might have

helped. The comedy is spirited, but the nastiness inherent in ''woman as

marketable commodity'' and chaps slugging it out to brotherhood cannot

be disguised.

* Dennis (PG) MGM Film Centre, Sauchiehall Street, Glasgow. Last

Action Hero (15) City Centre Odeon, Renfield Street, Glasgow. Both also

at UCI, Clydebank; Olympia, East Kilbride; MGM Forge, Parkhead. On

general release. Mad Dog and Glory (15) Cameo, Tollcross, Edinburgh.