Film: Catch the Wave.

Special effects are becoming-have already become-the tail that wags the movie dog. It is sad when computer graphics, animatronics, and the rest make story and dialogue secondary, and characterization, always Holly wood's stepchild, of tertiary importance. Tech nological innovations may be fly-by-night curiosities like smellies, or intermittent achievements like 3D; but com puterization, in film as elsewhere, is here to stay. When a tail becomes this big and powerful, it can wag an elephant, never mind a dog.

This may partly account for the lukewarm critical reception given The Perfect Storm, although it has done very well at the box office. That Sebastian Junger's book, on which it is based, was a longtime bestseller, may also have elicited a certain snootiness. While there is no denying that the movie's non-action sequences leave much to be desired, that should not deny the riveting aspects their due.

Warner Brothers requested the press not to reveal the film's ending. But many people must know it from the book and its reviews; many others from seeing the movie or from hearsay; by now, at any rate, I see no reason to inhibit criticism by still acceding to this demand. Six men aboard the Andrea Gail, a Gloucester, Mass., swordfishing boat, lost their lives in the great No-Name or Halloween Storm of 1991, when Hurri cane Grace collided with two other disturbances from the opposite direction to create what has been called the perfect storm, producing hundred-foot mountains of ravening water.

But saying that Wolfgang Petersen's film, with a script by Bill Wittliff from Junger's book, is a true story must be qualified with the reservation that dead men tell no tales, so that, beyond the bare known facts, fiction here can rampage like the storm. And this is where Wittliff, scenarist of some acceptable films, but also of the irritating Raggedy Man and the odious Legends of the Fall, unfortunately comes in. From a look at Junger's original, I conclude that no masterpiece was desecrated.

Besides the gallant but losing fight of the Andrea Gail's crew, there is the agonizing of their women glued to the TV at the Crow's Nest, the Glouces ter bar and hostelry where the fisherfolk hang out. There is also the air-sea rescue of three people on a sailboat by helicopter and Coast Guard cutter, in which one valiant rescuer loses his life when the copter, out of gas, must be ditched. Fishing and the rescue operations appertaining to it have cost more lives per capita than any other non-military profession; effectively, the film begins by scanning the names of a plaque of the 10,000 Gloucesterians who have died at sea, and ends with the six new names added to them.

The scenes on land, involving the fishermen and their women or families, are among the film's weakest. Those on the luxury sloop Satori-despite good actors wasted on them-are no better, except when these actors dangle from the copter that eventually deposits them, in mid-storm, on the cutter's deck. There is also a muffled near-romance between Billy Tyne, the Andrea Gail's captain (George Clooney), and the captain of another swordboat, Linda Greenlaw (Mary Elizabeth Mastran tonio), who, having been luckier with the nets, did not need to take Billy's risks. She survives with her boat, although Billy, alas, forever eludes her catch.

The main love story is between Bobby Shatford (Mark Wahlberg), Billy's pal and second-in-command, and his fian cee, Christina (Diane Lane); it strikes a few sparks, but fire is not this watery movie's element. There is also a running enmity, sometimes coming to blows, between two crew members, Murph (John C. Reilly) and Sully (Will iam Ficht ner), which is poorly motivated and builds to a rather stagy climax. The remaining crew members, Bugsy (John Hawkes) and the one black, Alfred Pierre (Allen Payne), are scarcely individualized. The various hero ics, as also among the helicopter crew, can seldom shake off the smell of the the stereotypical.

Yet the scenes in which Billy and his men accumulate a terrific catch (refusing to sacrifice it will cost them their lives) have a documentary fascination, even if the thrashing swordfish are portrayed by four animatronic marvels (with 100 nonanimatronic models in supporting roles). For these, we admire Walt Conti at Edge Innovations no less than we do Stefen Fangmeier and Industrial Light & Magic for creating the storm. Luckily, those two charming women and wonderful actresses, Diane Lane and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, are real enough, and in no danger from computerized competition.

The dialogue is fairly weak, but happily much of it is blotted out, if not by the storm itself, then by the churning of James Horner's music, which su pererogatorily duplicates it. The director, Wolfgang Petersen, came to the fore with Das Boot, and has done other good things as well, notably the chess movie Black and White Like Day and Night, for which my vote helped him win the Best Director award at the Paris Film Festival. His solidly commercial Ameri can films (e.g., Outbreak, Air Force One, In the Line of Fire) have been less artistic, but still apt. He has gotten good performances from his cast here to the extent the material allows (though Clooney may be miscast), and John Seale's cinematography is as fine on land as on water.

For all that may be wrong with it, The Perfect Storm is still preferable-less pretentious, more gripping-to the preposterous Titanic, with its phony story and cliched characters. And what a blessing not to have Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet.

--For weeks now I have been searching for another movie to fill out this column. All in vain. The first dis ap pointment was Woody Allen's Small Time Crooks, in which everyone is stupid or reprehensible, and every would-be joke is based on someone's dumb ness, incompetence, or rottenness, which I don't find funny. Or funny on so low a level as to make you laugh out of the wrong side of your mouth, and even that barely.

Some movies, such as Disney's The Kid, sounded so bad just from their descriptions, to say nothing of the early reviews, that I would no more venture near them than sail into a perfect storm. Nevertheless, I did see a couple. There was the profoundly distasteful Jesus' Son (originally called F***head, after its protagonist's nickname), which, aside from glorifying all sorts of druggy and demented behavior, takes itself disgustingly seriously-as witness the title, which makes its lowlife hero into a Christ figure. (This one received near-unanimous praise.)

Then there was But I'm a Cheerleader, an official selection of the Toronto and Sundance Festivals-granted, two of the dumbest festivals, but still. It was a unique combination (well, not so unique these days) of abject idiocy and total incompetence. Even the cinematography was-a rare thing today-appalling; it looked less like photography than like pink and blue daubs of nail polish on newsprint. While celebrating lesbian love, it made both heterosexuals and male homosexuals look like beasts or imbeciles.

Well, I shall persevere, and not let things like Gone in 60 Seconds (another winner!) get me down enough to give up. Don't you do so either.