``Little Indian, Big City'' is one of the worst movies ever made. I detestedevery moronic minute of it. Through a stroke of good luck, the entire thirdreel of the film was missing the day I saw it. I went back to the screening roomtwo days later, to view the missing reel. It was as bad as the rest, but nothingcould have saved this film. As my colleague Gene Siskel observed, ``If the thirdreel had been the missing footage from Orson Welles' `The MagnificentAmbersons,' this movie still would have sucked.'' I could not have put it bettermyself.

``Little Indian, Big City'' is a French film (I will not demean the fineword ``comedy'' by applying it here). It is not in French with Englishsubtitles, however. It has been dubbed into English, a canny move, since themovie is not likely to appeal to anyone who can read. The dubbing means thatawkward, hollow-sounding words emerge from the mouths of the characters whilethey flap their lips to a different rhythm. In an attempt to make the Englishdubbing match the length of the French dialogue, sentences are constructedbackward and the passive voice pops up at random. People say things like, ``Youhave a son--you hear?'' The character speaking that last line is the mother (Miou Miou) of a boyof about 12. She was once married to the film's hero (Thierry Lhermitte), butleft him 13 years earlier, when she was pregnant, because he spent too muchtime on the telephone. She fled to the Amazon, and has raised her child whileliving with an Indian tribe. Now he has flown to the rain forest to find hiswife, so they can be divorced and he can marry the most stupid woman on Earth.

The hero did not know he had a son--you hear? Now he meets him. The son,named Mimi-Siku (Ludwig Briand), wears a cute breech cloth, carries a bow andarrow, has a mask painted on his face, and kills snakes by biting them. Hismother is an intelligent, sensitive soul who loves the environment and the rainforest. She is the only person in the jungle who speaks English (or French, inthe original), so if her son learned to speak it, he learned it from her. Iguess it was her idea of a joke to teach him pidgin English, so that he saysthings like, ``Me no able read.'' I guess she didn't teach him to read, either.

She is depicted as kind of a secular saint.

Mimi-Siku is so good with a blowgun that he can kill a fly with a dart,and often does so. He has a hairy pet spider. His father brings him back toParis, where the movie gets worse. The father has a business partner who neverknows what to wear and so always wears the same thing the father wears. Ho, ho.

They go to business meetings in matching ties. Hee, hee. The partner has adaughter, and soon the son is bouncing in a hammock with a nubile 12-year-oldand telling his father, ``Me like you--love only one female.'' I doubt if therelationship will last, since the boy is prettier than the girl.

Later (or perhaps earlier, since it was in the third reel) Mimi-Sikuclimbs barefoot up the Eiffel Tower. This feat is handled so ineptly by the filmthat it has neither payoff nor consequence. He does it, and then the movieforgets it. Meanwhile, the father is doing a business deal with some shadyRussians, who speak in dubbed accents and drink vodka and seem to be wearingKrushchev's old suits. The father's fiancee (Arielle Dombasle) chants mantras,plans a New Age wedding, and wants her guru to live with them. I think she's insuch a hurry to get married because she's afraid the collagen injections in herlips might shift. By the end of the film, father and son have bonded, and cookeda fish by the side of the expressway. And the father has learned to kill a flywith a dart.

There is a movie called ``Fargo'' playing right now. It is amasterpiece. Go see it. If you, under any circumstances, see ``Little Indian,Big City,'' I will never let you read one of my reviews again.