IN MASK. Director Peter Bogdanovich musters up all the originality of the average Hallmark card Bogdanovich drenches the tragic life story of facially disfigured outcast Rocky Dennis with more sugar than the family size package of Cocoa Crispies, making John Hurt's Elephant Man look like the Wild Coyote by comparison. Climcal direction and Monday Night at the Movies screenwriting damn Mask into an abyss of sloppiness and unprofessionalism from which it is redeemed only by Eric Stoltz's tour-deforce in the title role and superb performances by Cher as Rocky's wackedout but tenderhearted Mom and Sam Elliott as her off-again, on-again biker boyfriend.

Newcomer Stoltz bursts through the constraints of the film's perpetually lefthanded direction with a charm and bravado that Bogdanovich would be wise to emulate. Stoltz's Rocky meanders through his teenage life unblemished by bitterness and remorse, leaving a trail of warmth and good cheer in his wake. Whether he's conning his friends out of valuable baseball cards in order to complete a series of the 1955 Brooklyn Dodgers, dreaming about biking through Europe on a Harley after graduation, fantasizing about what it's like to have a girlfriend, he gallops his way into our hearts. Although his altruism and sincerity may be occasionally overemphasized. Rocky's inveterate likeability serves the purpose of convincing us that he is no different from anyone else. Rocky comes Bogdanovich's modern-day Everyman whose adolescent trials and tribulations are magnified by an unfortunate accident of birth.

There is only one problem with this attempt to fashion a contemporary parallel of Renaissance parables: Bogdanovich isn't clever enough to succeed. He prevent us from identifying with. Rocky by surrounding him with a bunch of ridiculously implausible albeit excellently interpreted characters. Cher swaggers through the film as Rocky's coke-snorting, fast-talking mother: short on homespun values but overflowing with love and support for her son. Though motherly love and June Cleaver are not necessarily synonymous, it is still difficult to accept this absurd hybrid of James Dean and Phyllis Schlafly. Every member of Rocky's extended family of hard-core bikers emerges as a candidate for a humanitarian of the year award by the picture's end. Must we really believe that these Hell's Angels are so sympathetic and intelligent that they could displace Doug Flutie as the reigning icon of America's youth? In the midst of this three-ring circus of bikers, drug dealers and juvenile delinquents-come-lately, Rocky sticks out like a biker in a tuxedo--or a T.V. movie director spraying creative graffiti on the silver screen. We mourn for him not only because he is trapped inside a horribly defective body, but because he is confined to a looking-glass existence peopled by characters from over the rainbow.

Bogdanovich's incessant fumbling stains Mask with the "what-might-have-been" syndrome of a good idea lost in poor direction. Instead of another Elephant Man, which could have showcased the acting talents of Stoltz, Cher and Elliott to their best advantages, we get People presents the Life and Times of Rocky Stoltz.