Goin' South

My late father and I always referred to this as the movie we "accidentally" watched on HBO late one night. We were hooked when the posse rode right across the Rio Grande into Mexico and "Ol' Speed" fainted! For the rest of his life he always greeted me in the morning with "Good mornin' Spot!" In much the same vein as another of his favorites (Evil Roy Slade), it is difficult to find two lines together from this movie that can be taken seriously ("Please wipe your feet." . . "I always do!")("I'll be outside running a reference test." . . "Why don't you run one on your skull while you're at it?"). I have watched my home-recorded VHS upwards of 25-30 times and now that the DVD has been released, I look forward to adding it to my collection once again because . . . . "I can do this all day long! I'm talking about . . All Day Long!" Give it a spin and give it a chance.

The critics slammed this movie when it came out, as I recall. Exceedingly lofty expectations for Jack the director or something, I don't know. I just know that 25 years has made this movie better. I liked it from the start, and it seems that the rest of the world is coming around.

There are slow sections of this film, to be sure. But the great lines! "I wouldn't take you to a dog fight if you was the defendin' champion!" "We were just sayin' how much we needed a figurine." "Good mornin', ladies! I SHORE ENJOYED them CANNED APRICOTS LAST NIGHT!!!"

It bears up well to repeated watchings. What higher rating can a movie have?

One can't help but notice how Nicholson eventually gave up on concealing his hilariously obvious coke nose (to the untrained ear it just sounds like "allergies"- this is the usual excuse given, of course....).

Over the counter allergy medicine can help with allergy symptoms. Nothing helps cocaine-blasted sinuses.

Not even Scorsese could direct while coked up. Nicholson's attempt is considerably more disastrous. Take a second look at the cast (see Belushi) and it isn't hard to deduce what happened to this movie.

Note that it gets steadily worse as the film progresses.

I wasn't expecting a "great" movie being that this was Nicholson's only directing effort. I was just curious. I didn't expect something this bad. Yikes.

This movie is one of my all time favorites. I saw it when it first came out in the 1970's and thought it deserved more praise than it got. It is mostly an entertainment comedy with such lines as "You weren't that hard to find. You were standing in the middle of town with a rope around your neck." I read someplace where Mary Steenburgen had been working as a waitress in an Arizona dinner and Nicholson stopped in and thought she would be perfect for the part. I think there is some very touching scenes between Nicholson and Steenburgen that are well written and acted. Except for Christopher Lloyd the rest of the cast is wasted. I think the only reason John Belushi is in the movie is because Nicholson wanted to meet him. At that time Saturday Night Live was considered radical chic.

It's post-war Texas. Petty criminal Henry Lloyd Moon (Jack Nicholson) is set to hang. Due to the lack of men, there is a local law allowing a woman to marry and take responsibility for such a criminal. Julia Tate (Mary Steenburgen) volunteers to marry him. She needs help to work on a secret gold mine and plans to move away to Philadelphia before being evicted by the approaching railroad.

This law seems problematic. There are unexplored unintended consequences. Nicholson has such a prankster personality that he doesn't accentuates his criminal's threatening personality. Steenburgen doesn't help to heighten the romance. That is this movie's major issue. At no point do I buy this couple loving or even liking each other. Jack Nicholson is trying his hand in directing and he doesn't show much great skills. It's not visually arresting and he seems to just let the actors go. The movie never convinces me of the couple's love and I could never buy any cooperation in the gold. It's almost a relief that he takes a turn but I never believed it. This movie has some central flaws and can't work its way out of them.