THE EVENING STAR
A film review by Scott Renshaw
Copyright 1996 Scott Renshaw
(Paramount/Rysher) Starring: Shirley MacLaine, Bill Paxton, Miranda Richardson, Juliette Lewis, Marion Ross, George Newbern, Mackenzie Astin. Screenplay: Robert Harling. Producers: David Kirkpatrick, Polly Platt, Keith Samples. Director: Robert Harling. MPAA Rating: PG-13 (profanity, adult themes, sexual situations) Running Time: 130 minutes. Reviewed by Scott Renshaw.
THE EVENING STAR has so much good will working for it from the start that it would have taken an effort to make it a complete catastrophe. TERMS OF ENDEARMENT was a popular and critical success, and Aurora Greenway gave Shirley MacLaine a character which re-defined her career. Screenwriter and director Robert Harling is well-aware of this history, and his opening credits sequence tries to make the most of it. Over pictures of MacLaine, Debra Winger and Jeff Daniels, Michael Gore's familiar TERMS OF ENDEARMENT theme plays, working that good will like a boxer works the body to soften up the opponent. The unintended effect of these familiar signifiers, however, is to remind you how much more focused and satisfying a film TERMS was than THE EVENING STAR.
The sequel (based on Larry McMurtry's sequel to his own original novel) finds Aurora Greenway fifteen years older and little-changed. The same nearly-oppressive love which complicated Aurora's relationship with her late daughter Emma has similarly complicated her relationships with the three grandchildren she raised, all of whom are leading less than perfect lives. Tommy (George Newbern) is in jail for drug possession; Teddy (Mackenzie Astin) is an unmarried father driving a tow truck; Melanie (Juliette Lewis) is determined to run off to Los Angeles with her aspiring model boyfriend (Scott Wolf). An unhappy Aurora seeks help in therapy, where she finds her young counselor Jerry Bruckner (Bill Paxton) as helpful personally as professionally. Through various trials and tragedies, Aurora tries to make sense of her life by organizing photos and mementos into a scrapbook which -- she hopes -- will explain her place in the world.
The key to the success of TERMS OF ENDEARMENT lay in its pitch-perfect study of a contentious mother-daughter relationship, yet it is not exactly because Emma is absent that THE EVENING STAR feels less potent. That one relationship focused TERMS, however; you knew exactly what it was really about. THE EVENING STAR is in desperate need of that kind of focus. In addition to Aurora's relationships with each of her three grandchildren and with her counselor/suitor, the film examines Aurora's friendship with her long-time maid Rosie (Marion Ross), Rosie's romance with next-door neighbor Arthur (the late Ben Johnson in his last role), Aurora's rivalry with wealthy divorcee Patsy Carpenter (Miranda Richardson), Melanie's relationship with her boyfriend, and Aurora's strange relationship with a former flame (Donald Moffatt). Harling throws a lot of stuff at the screen, and some of it sticks, notably some exceptional moments for Ross and a few catty exchanges between MacLaine and Richardson. Unfortunately, there isn't enough of the stuff that works, and plenty of down time as Harling searches for a narrative deserving of Aurora's fire.
Shirley MacLaine obviously has a blast returning to the role of Aurora, and that obvious joy is likely to bring an audience with her farther than the material itself deserves. Aurora preens deliciously after she spends the night with Jerry, smiles a venomous smile as she catches Patsy in a deception, and generally makes overbearing motherhood her own personal fiefdom; it's just plain fun to spend time with a character this colorful. If only MacLaine hadn't made so many of Aurora's quirks so familiar by taking on a succession of infuriating-but-lovable roles distinguishable from one another only by the film in which they appeared -- STEEL MAGNOLIAS, POSTCARDS FROM THE EDGE, GUARDING TESS, MRS. WINTERBOURNE. All found MacLaine doing riffs on Aurora with varying degrees of success, and even a lively performance feels recycled after so many precursors. It doesn't feel at all like we have missed over a decade of Aurora Greenway's life. We've just been watching her using aliases.
The only time THE EVENING STAR hits a pure high note is when Jack Nicholson makes an all-too-brief cameo as playboy astronaut-turned-family man Garrett Breedlove (the role for which he won a Best Supporting Actor Academy Award). It is one of Nicholson's best and most restrained pieces of film acting in years; he seems both genuinely pleased to see his old love, and genuinely unsure about how to interact with her. There is so much affection and charm in those few scenes, as all the soap opera plot developments and histrionics take a breather, that it almost feels like 1983 all over again. Of course, that is what Robert Harling was going for all along in THE EVENING STAR, but he only had a couple of pieces of the puzzle available to him. A Paul McCartney concert with a token appearance by Ringo does not a Beatles reunion make, and THE EVENING STAR strives for a similar appeal it can't hope to achieve.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 conditional terms: 5.
Visit Scott Renshaw's MoviePage http://www-leland.stanford.edu/~srenshaw Subscribe to receive reviews directly via email See details on the MoviePage
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