Splash

It's hardly surprising that family ties run so deep throughout Howard's work. After all, the guy got his start by playing Opie Taylor on The Andy Griffith Show. He starred in Happy Days for years. He's married to his high school sweetheart, and he casts at least one family member in almost every film. He's Hollywood's official family man. But what's impressive is how this pop auteur has worked that sensibility into so many mainstream formulas — from comic fantasy (Splash) to big-budget event (Apollo 13) to urban suspense (Ransom). No matter what else the movie is about, it always comes down to family. At least it does in Howard's better work. When the human angle gets obscured by high-concept plot mechanics, a Ron Howard film can feel as emotionally empty as any other Hollywood product.

From a filmmaker whose most commercial instincts also tend to be his most heartfelt, Ransom's crowd-pleasing plot twists seem awfully calculated. That's also what's wrong with Backdraft, which begins as the story of estranged fire-fighting brothers (Kurt Russell, William Baldwin) but gets sidetracked by some mumbo jumbo about fire as a ''living thing'' before serving up Scott Glenn as a fireman-turned-serial arsonist. The overcooked plot not only feels forced (and false), it also shoves aside the family saga that made us care in the first place.

Howard does better when he reverses the Backdraft formula — that is, when he takes a far-fetched premise and invests it with feeling. That's what he accomplished in Splash, in which a man-mermaid romance is grounded by the fraternal give-and-take between buttoned-down Tom Hanks and goofball brother John Candy. A-