... and when the characters aren't having bored meaningless sex, they're talking about bored meaningless sex. No wonder, their lives are bored and meaningless, even the lives of the teens who don't seem to have the imagination to wonder what might be past Oklahoma. The few people who do love each other are in impossible situations where they can never be together, and the thing is just so darn depressing.
But if it is possible to make a film that is so desolate in its content be excellent in every other way, this one accomplishes it. First off, it captures the look of early 1950s Texas with its cinematography and art design with the old refrigerators, fans, automobiles, the dinette sets and TV trays, and the many shots of the barren Texas landscape. I'd say gray landscape, but then everything is gray since it is shot in black and white. Then there is the town that looks largely abandoned to the point I wonder how anyone can scratch out a living there. You'd never know that there was a post-war boom going on in the rest of America by looking at this place.
Finally, there is that cast, just as everybody is starting out - Cybil Shepherd, Timothy Bottoms, Jeff Bridges, and Randy Quaid. And this film launches Cloris Leachman, who's been around for a long time at this point, into a bit of a career renaissance that lasts through the 1970s.
I'd say this one is probably worth your time, but its content may be tough to sit through.
But if it is possible to make a film that is so desolate in its content be excellent in every other way, this one accomplishes it. First off, it captures the look of early 1950s Texas with its cinematography and art design with the old refrigerators, fans, automobiles, the dinette sets and TV trays, and the many shots of the barren Texas landscape. I'd say gray landscape, but then everything is gray since it is shot in black and white. Then there is the town that looks largely abandoned to the point I wonder how anyone can scratch out a living there. You'd never know that there was a post-war boom going on in the rest of America by looking at this place.
Finally, there is that cast, just as everybody is starting out - Cybil Shepherd, Timothy Bottoms, Jeff Bridges, and Randy Quaid. And this film launches Cloris Leachman, who's been around for a long time at this point, into a bit of a career renaissance that lasts through the 1970s.
I'd say this one is probably worth your time, but its content may be tough to sit through.