Writer-director and sports specialist Ron Shelton (Bull Durham, White Men Can’t Jump) teams up with writer John Norville (an old golfing buddy) in a comedy about a golfer down on his luck (Kevin Costner) who decides to win the heart and hand of a psychologist (Rene Russo) by triumphing in the U.S. Open; Cheech Marin and Don Johnson costar. The four leads make this a fair amount of fun, though you have to put up with a lot of infantile claptrap about their charactersRusso’s, for instance, starts off as intriguing, but she winds up as a boring bimbo groupie, and Marin eventually degenerates into a standard-issue Latin lover. The tension between Costner and Johnson is basically a matter of class and sexual envy, and the echoes of Howard Hawks and Preston Sturges that often ring through this movie never work to Shelton’s advantage; this is OK entertainment, but it isn’t a patch on Bull Durham. (JR)