RAPA NUI (1994)

RAPA NUI (Warner Bros., R) The stone-faced statue gods on Easter Island display more personality than most of the actors in this pretty but inert fairy tale-a loincloth epic with British accents. In the late 1600s, on the isle of Rapa Nui (as Easter Island was then known), Noro (Jason Scott Lee), a strapping young hunk from the aristocratic Long Ear clan, falls for Ramana (Sandrine Holt), a beautiful but forbidden Short Ear. To rescue their Romeo and Juliet romance, Ramana is forced to spend months in a dank cave and Noro must win the Birdman race, a ritual swim through shark-infested waters that climaxes in the world's most brutal Easter egg hunt. The contest itself is excitingly staged, and there are ravishing images of the tribesmen lugging those giant carved statues through treeless golden-green fields. But as soon as the characters open their mouths, the film devolves into deadly stilted nativist kitsch. D+

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