NOBODY'S FOOL
A film review by Mike Harris
Copyright 1995 Mike Harris
This is a slice of life in small-town New York state where everybody knows everybody so well that it pushes the boundaries of normal social convention. Paul Newman and Jessica Tandy give excellent performances but there is a very strong supporting cast with very good ensemble. The plot is really secondary to the exposition of the intricate and sometimes bizarre relationships between the characters that stay just inside of being believable. The plot, since I know you want to know anyway, is focussed on Paul Newman's character, a man in his sixties, who is just an ordinary guy in a sense. He comes from a family where his father regularly beat his wife and he learned to hate him, he walked out on his wife when his son was a year old and his son subsequently learned to hate him for abandoning them. But things come full circle as the son returns to town, his marriage in trouble and learns the seeds of love for his father as he helps him through troubled times.
That sounds pretty heavy but it is not, quite the reverse, the drama is never "laid on" but always light with a touch of humour. The humour in some instances erupted and made be laugh out loud and long, one of the funniest being the court scene where the town is prosecuting guess who for striking a police officer after the said police officer had fired his pistol. And if that doesn't pique your curiosity ... how can that be funny?
.
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews