THE EVENING STAR
A film review by Christopher Null
Copyright 1996 Christopher Null
What could be more foul than having your ashes spread over the beach of the horribly polluted Gulf of Mexico? Well, maybe having to sit through THE EVENING STAR, the long-awaited tearjerky sequel to TERMS OF ENDEARMENT.
THE EVENING STAR picks up in 1988, and follows 8 more years of the further adventures of Aurora Greenwood's (Shirley MacLaine) uber-dysfunctional extended family. Now, Emma's (Debra Winger in TERMS) kids have grown up under Aurora's eye, and the jury's still out on how well she did. Their Aunt Patsy (Miranda Richardson) is now a wealthy divorcee who is constantly one-upping Aurora. The caustic Aurora finds brief happiness in the arms of a younger man (Bill Paxton). Rosie (Marion Ross) is still in Aurora's kitchen, and a whole horde of minor players weave in and out of the action, mainly serving to dredge up the past and to breathe some new life into the ENDEARMENT franchise.
THE EVENING STAR is so chock full of mystery illnesses & deaths, Oedipal complexes, prison terms, illegitimate children, and other staples of daytime TV that you'd think it would make a much better movie than it does. Instead, the film comes off as a pointless rehashing of old story lines, part soap opera (see above illnesses, etc.) and part sitcom (sample wacky dialogue: "How are we gonna get Aurora Greenwood to see a shrink!?").
...and *all* cheese. By killing off the entire senior citizen population of Houston (where the film is set and was shot in), the filmmakers go straight for the tear ducts, in the hopes that you'll be crying too much to notice that this movie has no plot whatsoever. When someone's not gasping last words, the film is just a series of movie cliches, one after another. Why bother?
While there are a few bright sparks in the film, notably the fantastically over-the-top Richardson and the curmudgeony Ross, plus some decent jokes here and there, overall the movie is a meandering tale that, in the end, just reminds me even more of why I hate Houston so much.
RATING: **
|------------------------------|
\ ***** Perfection \
\ **** Good, memorable film \
\ *** Average, hits and misses \
\ ** Sub-par on many levels \
\ * Unquestionably awful \
|------------------------------|
-Christopher Null / null@filmcritic.com / Writer-Producer -Visit the Movie Emporium at http://www.filmcritic.com/ -and Null Set Productions at http://www.filmcritic.com/nullset.htm
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