mossgrymk

I fondly recall this forgotten 70s look at So Cal beach culture. Scenarist Ron Koslow and director Daniel Petrie tackle the question a lot of us face in our early to mid 30s, namely, What am I gonna do with the rest of my damn life? And they do it with a notable lack of pretension and/or speechifying that is most refreshing, especially when you contrast it with heavy handed treatments of the same theme emanating from the Stirling Silliphant/Steve Shagan types who were popular back then. Also aiding this film immensely is a fine performance in the lead/title role from Sam Elliot who with his combination of eternal bemusement and wry humor could be Jeff Labowski's slightly less bright younger sib. And Kathleen Quinlan, an actor I've always liked who, for whatever reason, never quite made it, is also good as a neurotic beach chick. Give it a B plus.

I see where the film makers have considerably sexed and jazzed up Austen's most somber novel. It is undoubtedly more entertaining and a whole lot less stodgy but as an admirer of the 1814 work I confess to a feeling of dismay (an emotion often felt by Austen women) that things that in the novel were left beneath the surface, such as the heroine Fanny Price's feelings about slavery and the sexual ambiguity of Mary Crawford are, in Patricia Rozema's film, shoved rather rudely in the viewer's face. I also did not like altering characters to fit turn of the 21st century Me Too tropes such as making Sir Thomas a leering, incestuous old man rather than the interestingly ambivalent person he is in the book with half of him in sympathy with Fanny for her travails and the other half in opposition to her desire not to marry the sleazy Henry Crawford because of Sir Thomas' conventional, paternalistic views on submissive womanhood.

So, have a good time watching but after you're done might I suggest picking up the original work and doing a little cost/benefit analysis? B minus.

It's sweet as all get out with great affection for its characters and for those reasons I REALLY wanted to like it but I just could not shake off the cloak of boredom that enveloped me from the film's first scene. The characters, while occasionally touching and even at times charming, are just not very interesting and director/co writer Nancy Savoca doesn't give them much to do beyond being generically Italian. There is also in the dialogue and cinematography an annoying ersatz Fellini by way of "Marty" vibe that makes you wish you were watching the real thing rather than this second hand stuff. After about an hour I pulled the plug. Solid C.