`REUNION' SHAPING UP AS A BIG HIT.

Byline: Marilyn Beck & Stacy Jenel Smith

One of the ``Friends'' might finally have a big-screen hit.

The Lisa Kudrow/Mira Sorvino/Janeane Garofalo comedy, ``Romy and Michele's High School Reunion,'' is generating so much industry heat that director David Mirkin already has follow-up film offers lined up. ``Reunion'' is Mirkin's first big-screen directorial assignment. And it doesn't even hit theaters until April 25.

``It's amazing. There's been a huge response to the trailer,'' says Mirkin, who left the L.A. stand-up scene in 1982 to work his way up to the position of executive producer/writer/director of ``Newhart'' and ``The Simpsons.''

``Reunion'' - in which Kudrow and Sorvino play L.A. party girls who attend their 10-year high school reunion in Tucson, Ariz., pretending they've achieved great success and wealth as the inventors of Post-Its - was supposed to have been released May 30. ``Then we were moved forward to April 18 - and now the 25th,'' says Mirkin. As it stands now, it will compete at the box office with the mega-budgeted ``Volcano'' - but Mirkin feels comfortable about that.

``The feeling is that we will be a popular alternative film. It's a very funny comedy and should be a nice relief from the barrage of noise you'll get with `Volcano.' '' Besides, he points out, a volcano-disaster film is no longer a novelty, with ``Dante's Peak'' in theaters since February.

Giving it his all

You can't say Jon Bon Jovi isn't taking his foray into acting seriously. The rock titan, who has the feature films ``Homegrown'' and ``Little City'' upcoming, says he'll do whatever's needed ``to fit a role.'' Yep, even if that means altering the look his music fans have grown to love. ``For `Little City,' '' says Bon Jovi, ``I put on some weight and cut my hair really short.'' For the Ed Burns film, ``Long Time Nothing New,'' which he starts this month, Bon Jovi says he went through a workout regimen. He explains that he plays ``a working guy, and he's got to be in pretty good shape.''

Green scene

Mia Farrow's bought a lovely thatch cottage in Wicklow, outside Dublin. That makes her part of the immediate neighborhood already shared by such luminaries as Daniel Day-Lewis, Chieftains leader Paddy Moloney, U2 manager Paul McGuinness and filmmaker John Boorman.

Sports beat

Dweezil and Ahmet Zappa are getting lots of response to their wacky ESPN baseball commercial - which has the Zappa Bros. done up as '70s TV detectives (think ``Starsky & Hutch''). There'll be at least a dozen such spots, airing throughout baseball season, with the boys on different adventures in each one. Dweezil tells us their favorite upcoming spot has him and Ahmet chasing down a bad guy who has been selling fake signature baseballs for $100 apiece. ``We bust the door down and find the culprit, a short person in a SWAT outfit with a clown mask on. We use unnecessary violence to subdue him, and we pull off the mask, and it's Gary Coleman.''

Asked how he liked filming the bit with the former ``Diff'rent Strokes'' star, Dweezil deadpans, ``Are you kidding? It was a lifelong dream. Ahmet and I have always talked about Gary Coleman. I don't know why, but we do.'' Dweezil also says that initially, John Tesh was lined up to portray the baseball signature counterfeiter, but ``he had to go to Hawaii or something. Gary Coleman was the obvious replacement.''

She's diva-stating

Kathy Kinney, who plays the obnoxious Mimi on ``The Drew Carey Show,'' will be the latest diva on the block when Sheryl Lee Ralph puts on the eighth annual ``DIVAS: Simply Singing'' AIDS fund-raiser to benefit Project Angel Food. Kinney will join Oleta Adams, Liz Torres, Tisha Campbell, Jody Watley and Toni Tennille at the May 10 event at L.A.'s Wilshire Ebell Theatre. Ralph is also hosting ``In the Evening With Divas'' - a dance party following the event at the nightclub Probe.

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3 Photos

Photo: (1) Jon Bon Jovi

Becoming buff

(2) Mia Farrow 

In an Irish cottage

(3) Dweezil Zappa

Baseball's been good