Starring Dave Hoover, George Mendonca, Ray Mendez and Rodney Brooks Directed by Errol Morris Rated PG, with adult themes, violence and mild profanity Running time 82 minutes Jack give this film a rating of 7 out of 10

(Jan. 23, 1998) -- Director Errol Morris has made a career out of stretching the bounds of documentary films, in style and subject matter.

His important, innovative movies include The Thin Blue Line, which exposed the injustice of a Texas murder conviction and led to its reversal, and A Brief History of Time, which popularized physicist Stephen Hawking and his theories.

But his new film, Fast, Cheap & Out of Control, is strange, even for him. Morris intercuts the lives and adventures of four eccentric fellows with little in common except that each marches to the beat of his own oddball drummer. They are:

Dave Hoover, a lion tamer who has spent his life walking in the sawdust footprints of his hero, the legendary Clyde Beatty.

George Mendonca, a dedicated topiary gardener who approaches his work with the sort of passion Michelangelo brought to marble.

Rodney Brooks, an M.I.T. scientist who wants robots to become bigger parts of our lives.

Ray Mendez, who has dedicated his life to the study of the naked mole rat, an odd creature with no hair or sweat glands who lives in tunnels under the African veldt.

By switching among their stories, Morris suggests that a common thread connects the profiles. But call me dense: I don't see it.

In some vague way, all four men are trying to achieve control or power over something. But even this most general conclusion doesn't hold because Mendez seems intent on simply studying the mole rat.

Even the title -- Fast, Cheap & Out of Control -- is hard to fathom. Lions and robots don't come cheap, and topiary bushes are anything but fast.

So my best advice is, enjoy Morris' film as an anthology tour through four off-the-wall vocations. You'll gain small but rewarding pleasures, including a few surprising insights.

For example, I learned why a lion tamer holds up a chair in the cage as he approaches the lion.

"When you point the four legs of a chair at them, they get confused," Hoover says, "They don't know where to look, and they lose their train of thought."

In some ways, I felt that way about Morris' film. I was intrigued by the four legs, but I couldn't quite see the chair.