Texasville
September. 28,1990 RSummer, 1984: 30 years after Duane captained the high school football team and Jacy was homecoming queen, this Texas town near Wichita Falls prepares for its centennial. Oil prices are down, banks are failing, and Duane's $12 million in debt. His wife Karla drinks too much, his children are always in trouble, and he tom-cats around with the wives of friends. Jacy's back in town, after a mildly successful acting career, life in Italy, and the death of her son. Folks assume Duane and Jacy will resume their high school romance. And Sonny is "tired in his mind," causing worries for his safety. Can these friends find equilibrium in middle age?
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I like the storyline of this show,it attract me so much
Did you people see the same film I saw?
One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.
Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.
Based on the 1987 novel of the same name by Larry McMurtry, this is a rather disappointing film. It was quite a good idea to make a sequel to the excellent "The Last Picture Show" but Peter Bogdanovich set the bar too high for himself and is unable to replicate its success. The original film was an often moving and occasionally depressing elegy to the bleak, desolate little town of Anarene, Texas which had been slowly dying for years and its inhabitants' sad, unfulfilled lives of wasted potential. The people of Anarene's lives are no more fulfilled in 1984 than they were in 1951 but it is not presented anywhere near as effectively. On the bright side, Bogdanovich's direction is good but his writing is not up to much.Eight actors from "The Last Picture Show" reprise their roles, most notably Jeff Bridges as Duane Jackson and Cybill Shepherd as Jacy Farrow. Bridges is a wonderful actor and it is unsurprising that he returned to the role that nabbed him his first Oscar nomination at only 22 but the material let him down. Shepherd is not any not on his level but she is still good even though she has the same problem as regards the material. Sonny Crawford was the heart and soul of "The Last Picture Show" so it is a major disappointment that Timothy Bottoms has what amounts to little more than a minor supporting role. Obviously, this is because Bottoms' career did not take off in the same manner as Bridges and Shepherd's did after the earlier film but it was still irritating. On the other hand, the more famous but less talented Randy Quaid has a somewhat larger supporting role as Lester Marlow, a character who only had a few scenes in the original film. I can't say that I had much interest in his financial or marital problems. I fail to see why Bogdanovich brought back actresses of the calibre of Eileen Brennan as Genevieve and Cloris Leachman as Ruth Popper when they barely have any screen time. The only newcomer who particularly stood out was the always excellent Annie Potts as Duane's wife Karla. In the first film, Ellen Burstyn gave the best performance as Lois Farrow and I think that she rather than Leachman deserved the Best Supporting Actress Oscar so it was very disappointing that she did not return. Sex and affairs played a major role in the first film but, on this occasion, I practically needed a flowchart to keep track of all the affairs, if so far as I really cared. In contrast to that film, they take place mostly in the background and only a few really have any impact on the plot. This film takes place in the summer of 1984 and it does a good job of capturing the zeitgeist of the period with its references to Walter Mondale running against Ronald Reagan in the US presidential election, the Soviet Union boycotting the LA Olympics and "Material Girl" and "Karma Chameleon" playing on the radio. Of the many references to "The Last Picture Show", my favourite was one of the simplest: the framed photo of Sam the Lion and Billy in Sonny's store.Overall, this is certainly a disappointing film but I am still glad that I watched it as there are some nice performances and I always like revisiting characters after many years to see what has become of them. To that end, I would like a third film but I really don't see it happening.
Good sequel to the superb The Last Picture Show, also directed by Peter Bogdanovich, 19 years earlier. Whereas The Last Picture Show dealt with the decline of small-town America, Texasville shows it still exists, but barely. Focuses on the lives of several middle- aged people, mostly the main characters from The Last Picture Show, and how their hopes and dreams have faded and reality is less pleasant.The feeling of nostalgia, of tedium, of lives going nowhere, yet hope within that emptiness, is tangible. Among this drama, there is great humour, however.Superb performances all round. This role was probably the one that turned Jeff Bridges into the downtrodden, bedraggled anti-hero, and launched countless roles for home. Cybill Shepherd is solid as Jacy. Next to Bridges, the star turn belongs to Annie Potts who is simultaneously beautiful, funny, sassy and intelligent as Karla.Ultimately does really make as big an impression as The Last Picture Show, and sort of fizzles out towards the end. The destination is quite tame, but the journey is worth taking.
Unless you saw Peter Bogdanovich's classic The Last Picture Show, if you even start at the beginning of Texasville you'll feel like you've walked in on the film in the middle and have to catch up. I'm not sure the film is capable of standing on its feet so to speak.Anarene, Texas in The Last Picture Show is about the passing away of the old values that gave Texas the culture it has, the small town looks like it's about to shrivel and blow away like a tumbleweed as that film ended. But in the intervening thirty years, the town seems to have experienced a renaissance due to oil and the high prices it commands for energy. If you remember in Urban Cowboy, John Travolta leaves home and hearth in a place that looks like Anarene for a job in the Houston petrochemical industry which was booming in 1980.But if you also remember between those years the OPEC nations let loose a glut of oil on the world market which drove the price down worldwide. The bank that Jeff Bridges is now the head of is caught in a nice financial squeeze investing in some wells locally that better produce and soon. Sad to say that's another historical point that might even get lost on an audience 25 years later.Still of the half a dozen or so cast members who repeated their roles from The Last Picture Show in Texasville, materially Bridges has made out the best. But he's also got a wife in Annie Potts who's bored with the marriage, half a dozen kids, including William McNamara who's having sex with half the women in the town. Just a chip off the old block. Bridges facing financial ruin just about caps things off for the Jackson family.Cybill Shepherd the teen dream queen of the Fifties went to Europe and became an actress, but whose marriage to a continental fizzled and a son died. Rich and somewhat dissipated, she's just back to her roots.Timothy Bottoms the other half of the running backs from the high school with Bridges has not done really well. He owns a greasy spoon eatery and he's getting by. But he's struck with a mysterious malady which could be anything from a brain tumor to early onset Alzheimer's. We never really find out in Texasville.Texasville has ambitions to be a character study like Long Day's Journey Into Night and these people are interesting though not the same league as the Tyrone family. But the film, interesting in spots though it is, relies too much on its roots from The Last Picture Show to stand on its own.
Although I like Annie Potts, I think she was miscast, even though she did a good job as Karla. Karla should have been a tall, Texas blonde-type. Annie got Karla's personality down, but after the book, a petite brunette just didn't fit the bill. Overall, though--Texasville was a disappointment. Movies are rarely as good as books--this I realize--but Texasville was a huge disappointment. Part of it was the period made--the late 80's and early 90's produced few good films. And Texasville, to me, felt more like an average sitcom than a movie.To return again to the book vs movie them--I do believe a great movie can be made from a great book, especially most of Larry McMurtry's. Lonesome Dove was superb, as of course was The Last Picture Show. Perhaps the problem was that Texasville is funny, as opposed to heavy, like Picture Show. And funny is harder to do without being sitcom-like. Texasville seemed to me to be lacking balance (as a picture--the book was plenty balanced).