Trente-sept degrés à l'ombre

I'm not sure who thought this should be labeled a comedy. In the 1970s, Peter Fonda made some quirky movies, many relegated to the drive-in theaters, which seemed fitting for his "outlaw" reputation following Easy Rider. 92 in the Shade apparently was the movie he enjoyed making the most. His best friend Warren Oates is the co-star. Key West is the setting. Lots of boats. And I'm sure there were some "herbs" in the air while shooting the film too.

This is a very loose, rambling film. Had Robert Altman directed a movie for the sole purpose of having it play at drive-ins, it would probably resemble this movie. Thomas McGuane wrote and directed it, a writer I'd never heard of before, but apparently he has a cult following.

Despite being pals in real life, Fonda and Oates are at odds throughout most of the movie. Fonda, who is referred to as "that skinny kid" by the characters played by Oates and Harry Dean Stanton, returns to the Keys from...well, it's never made clear. His father (played by William Hickey) is an eccentric millionaire who seems to be living off the wealth of his own father and Fonda's grandfather in the film, played by Burgess Meredith.

Fonda's Tom Skelton wants to get into the charter boat guide biz, much to the chagrin of the old salts whose living depends on chartered guide boats (Oates' Nicholas Dance and Stanton's Faron Carter). Skelton, despite being amiable, has a reckless rebellion streak (the outlaw strikes again...), and he he commits a needless act that sets the main conflict between he and Dance in motion.

Then there are the women...Carter's wife, played by Elizabeth Ashley, and Skelton's girlfriend (Margot Kidder). For no reason but to apparently spice up the action, the two ladies argue and then get into a cat fight during a picnic.

Little of this is funny. The film drips of atmosphere of the Florida Keys and despite the hostility their characters have toward each other, Fonda and Oates clearly are having a good time. This movie appeared on videotape in the mid '80s but was never released on DVD or BluRay. Nice to see Criterion Channel picking it up. Worth a watch if you like Fonda, Oates, or Stanton. Just don't expect a lost classic.

If you are into bell bottoms, hipsters, and quirky characters, this is your movie. Peter Fonda as usual, sleepwalks through the scenery. Warren Oates is his off kilter self, and Harry Dean Stanton is along for the ride. The supporting cast is uniformly eccentric. Unfortunately the story plays like an instructional fishing film. There are more than a few tedious moments. If you have the patience to listen carefully, some of the dialog is amusing, but not enough to sustain momentum. Ultimately, the film must be regarded as nothing more than a curiosity, with absolutely no surprises from the plot, and a very predictable ending - MERK

Competition becomes grimly fierce between a young drifter, just returned home to his parents' Key West manor and wanting to get into the fishing guide business for tourists, and the established middle-aged guide and his partner who believe they rule the local waters. Atmospheric and seasoned to a fault, writer Thomas McGuane's character-oriented drama, which he adapted from his own novel and directed, overdoses on Florida's marinas and verandas, conch houses and local bars, salty denizens and tin-roof shacks. The accent should be on the eccentrics dotting McGuane's scenario (and the colorful group of actors in the cast), but the milieu overwhelms the proceedings to the point where the mini-war between Peter Fonda and Warren Oates seems irrelevant. There's still a great deal of colorful talk to listen to, but the plot as such doesn't build any momentum. ** from ****

Thomas McGuane had a little Hollywood vogue in the mid-1970s, with this movie and "Rancho Deluxe" the same year, then big-budget "Missouri Breaks" the next. The latter film was famously a victim of Marlon Brando's disinterest in following the script, which of course made the writer unhappy. All of these movies were commercial disappointments, so the vogue came to a fast end.

Today "Breaks" has its defenders (though I think it's still a very mixed bag), "Rancho Deluxe" looks like an underrated minor classic of the period, and "92 in the Shade" (which shares some of the same cast as "Rancho") remains a misfire you keep hoping will be better than it is. The typically blank, low-energy Peter Fonda aside, it's got a theoretically fine cast. But the movie just never quite works in translating McGuane's distinctive literary sensibility to the screen--and that is because McGuane as film director (for the first/last time) has no idea how to stage scenes or pace the whole. There's no variation in tone, no overall suspense or tension, which is unfortunate because the very heart of his writing is its loopy mixture of wacky humor and narrative intrigue. None of that comes across here, despite characters and incidents that ought to work.

The film just pokes along neutrally from one sequence to another, getting no particular flavor from the Florida coastal setting, generating no sense of peril even though it ends in violence (and both Warren Oates and Burgess Meredith in unusually negative, unsympathetic roles). The characters are superficially colorful but fail to come alive; Elizabeth Ashley's wife (to Harry Dean Stanton, much better used in "Rancho," which she was also in) never transcends caricature, and Margot Kidder's girlfriend is just The Girl. These are actors with so much personality, it's amazing that the film manages to make them uninteresting. It's not a terrible film, but McGuane's inexperience means the dominating tone isn't his eccentric authorial one, it's the default competence of his crew, who pretty obviously made most of the technical decisions themselves for lack of much directorial guidance.

Anyway, watching this in close proximity with "Rancho Deluxe" and "The Missouri Breaks" (both of which I'd originally seen in the 70s) underlined that "Rancho" remains the one movie that did Thomas McGuane justice. (Admittedly, I haven't seen "Tom Horn"--but I have seen "The Sporting Club," unfortunately, and that's as much a misfire as "92," although in a much more bombastic, self-important way.)

Don't miss this little treat of a film. If you liked The Hired Hand, this has the same laid back style that works great for a Southern story. But it's not so much the story. It's the ripe dialog and a cast of Great American Actors that make this one to catch. Warren Oates and Harry Dean Stanton make a great team of ornery fishing guides. Burgess Meredith has a great role and makes the best of it. Margot Kidder looks absolutely great here too. But Joe Spinell is worth the price of admission in a small role. The cinematography is experimental like The Hired Hand but is not as successful. Overall, this film is a gentle surprise and would be perfect for a warm evening. Recommended without hesitation.