Quick recap: Terms of Endearment follows the 30 year relationship between a mother and daughter. When something bad-DAMMIT. I can’t do this. Damn you all to hell, Terms of Endearment. Evil incarnate is what this movie is.

Fun (?) fact: As a gift for directing the movie, Matt Groening gave James L. Brooks a book of ‘Life in Hell’ cartoons. Brooks loved it so much, he got Groening to create cartoon shorts for the Tracy Ullman show. And that’s how The Simpsons was created!

My thoughts: Before I go any further, I need to confess that yes, I did in fact cry. I’m not proud of it, but at least I fought hard until the very end. As you can probably pick up on, I’m not the most sensitive when it comes to schmaltzy things. Anything Nicholas Sparks makes me physically ill  as well as movie theaters that have ‘girlie nights’. UGH. I mean, if you  want to show Ferris Bueller, DO IT. Don’t label it ‘girlie night’ and slap on some discount wine special with the purchase of sushi. It cheapens the film and isolates a good portion of moviegoers who would’ve gladly gone otherwise. /rant

Back to the movie. If this film has any strength to stand up to other Oscar Winners, it does so with the strong acting. Every actor was believable which is probably why I was able to suspend my hatred for anything cheesy and let myself be free with my emotions. I absolutely loved Shirley MacLaine (damn you, James L. Brooks for making me love Shirley MacLaine). Debra Winger grew on me as the movie went on, but her laugh never did. I read that she was trying to get over a cocaine addiction while filming so I don’t feel so bad. Jack Nicholson of course was wonderful as well, but this ‘arrogant jerk who turns out to be a good guy’ is kind of his thing.

For all the ‘girlies’ who came here to read a gushing review of the film that totally destroyed their every emotion, it’s time to stop reading.

I was into the mother/daughter relationship from the beginning because I am a daughter who happens to be close to her mom. I totally got the endless phone calls and how much they shared with each other. The entire relationship seemed completely authentic, even leading up to Emma’s death. (Oops. SPOILER ALERT: Emma dies.) The plot started to fall apart  towards the end as Emma got closer and closer to death. For one thing, making the decision as to who would keep the children seemed way over the top. Maybe that was a thing back then, but Flap was a perfectly decent father. He should’ve just sucked it up and raised his own children instead of pawning them off to Aurora so that he could continue his love affair with that other woman. Then again, that would’ve saved like 10 minutes of drama. The last 30 minutes of the film is basically, ‘are you crying yet? no? Let me put in a scene where Emma says goodbye to her children! That didn’t do it? How about Aurora screaming at the nurses to help her daughter who was in pain? No? Dammit. You are totally going to cry when Emma actually dies. There we go! Just in case, let’s add a few more scenes to keep you crying.’

Final review:  4/5. You couldn’t make me sit through that again, though.

Up Next: All About Eve

Quick recap: After a distant uncle leaves him millions, Longfellow Deeds moves from an idyllic small town to the big city. Once there, he is  taken advantage of and laughed at for such shocking things as giving donuts to a horse and playing the tuba. To make matters worse, the girl he falls in love with turns out to be an undercover reporter who has been writing all the sensational stories about him in the newspaper.

Fun (?) fact: The verb ‘doodle’ originated from this movie as well as the term ‘pixelated’, which was a popular word for a few years and then died out.

My thoughts: There is nothing I enjoy more than an American classic movie, provided I see the following: a spinning newspaper montage, a fainting lady, a climactic courtroom scene, and a random musical number. And boy howdy, did this movie deliver. After the 4th or so spinning newspaper montage, I realized that I had reached American classic movie heaven.

courtroom scene!

Seeing as how Mr. Deeds Goes to Town is labeled as a ‘screwball comedy’, I knew there wouldn’t be much thinking involved. I was disappointed with the first 10 or so minutes of the film because I couldn’t understand a word anyone said because they talked so fast. After I turned on the subtitles, however, I really started to enjoy myself. This movie is about as predictable as they come, and that’s okay sometimes. It was relaxing to find myself laughing over the sillier parts and rolling my eyes through the mushier ones. I think I was most surprised by the amount of heart this film had. Gary Cooper as Longfellow Deeds was the perfect fit. He was adorably naive, and yet was sometimes the sanest person around. I genuinely felt for him when the writers made fun of his poetry and my heart broke when he realized the woman he was in love with had secretly been making fun of him the entire time. Plus, Gary Cooper has a strong resemblance to Bill Nye that endeared him to me even more.

bow ties are cool

Mr. Deeds Goes to Town is adequately entertaining, but for me, really shines in a historical context. The way the small town is described is not what was really going on, but instead what Americans expected in the Great American Dream. In many ways, this movie sparked that idea of quintessential small town values trumping anything the big city has to offer. The tie in to the Depression was also an apt one. As Deeds tries to do good by not becoming a cynical fat cat, he ends up falling short of his own expectations when he realizes all the farmers he could be helping with his fortune. The scene were the farmer barges in on Deeds and points a gun at him was a little schmaltzy, but the movie’s heart was in the right place.

I felt the courtroom scene went on too long and all loose ends were tied up a little too neatly. As more and more witnesses came forward with their shocking tales of Deeds, I wondered how he could possibly explain away every person’s complaint, but somehow he did . I knew from the first few minutes of the film that I would get a happy ending, but I suppose I was hoping for a little more substance than what I got. Then again, this is an American classic, and a courtroom scene is a necessary trope.

Final review: 4/5. I’d watch again just for Gary Cooper.

Up next:The Bride of Frankenstein