Mr. & Mrs. Bridge (1990)

Excellent, a Must See

The film was still a fun one that will make you laugh and have you leaving the theater feeling like you just stole something valuable and got away with it.

There is just so much movie here. For some it may be too much. But in the same secretly sarcastic way most telemarketers say the phrase, the title of this one is particularly apt.

Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

Sleep inducing story of an old married couple and their children. Walter Bridge (Paul Newman) is a mean obnoxious old man who treats everybody like dirt--especially his wife. India Bridge (Joanne Woodward) plays his long-suffering wife who fights to keep the family together. Their children--Carolyn (Margaret Walsh) and Douglas (Robert Sean Leonard)--want to live their own lives.Long, boring and wildly overpraised movie. This is one of those small art films that critics fell all over themselves raving about (mostly because they couldn't figure out what it was about so it MUST be intelligent). What this actually is is a character study of a heavily dysfunctional and VERY dull family. Nothing wrong with character studies but the characters have to be interesting...and these aren't! The script is by the numbers and has been done before in many other better films. Also this movie drags out for OVER 2 hours! You keep waiting for something to happen...and it doesn't! I was fighting to stay awake through the whole thing. The acting is all good (especially by Newman and Woodward) but it can't save such a dull film. Mostly forgotten...and for good reason! I give it a 1.

Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward affirm their status as some of America's greatest movie stars in the Merchant & Ivory vehicle "Mr. & Mrs. Bridge". They play the title characters Walter and India, living in 1939 Kansas City. He's a conservative lawyer: doesn't like to see any change in their lifestyle, won't let an approaching tornado interfere with dinner, and even considers Roosevelt's policies to be socialism. She's a housewife: everything at home is based on wholesome cookbooks, and it's rather awkward when she finally learns about the reproductive system and has to tell her children (in short, an air of Marion Cunningham).Yes, it looks like nothing's ever going to change in this household. But looks can be deceiving. You see, their daughter Carolyn (Margaret Welsh) wants to marry a boy without Walter's permission; daughter Ruth (Kyra Sedgwick) wants to move to New York; and son Douglas (Robert Sean Leonard) is hanging out with a Hispanic girl. To crown everything, India's friend Grace (Blythe Danner) is beginning to challenge the status quo; she might even be losing her mind.Now, Walter can deny all this. But he can't ignore it. As they move into this new era, things are going to be different, even if some awkward - maybe even unpleasant - situations have to arise.This movie was definitely an interesting look at an America slowly but surely crumbling. The cast members all do a top-notch job. Also starring Austin Pendleton as Grace's husband. I wonder if Marcus Giamatti, who plays Ruth's hubby, is any relation to Paul Giamatti.

My first thought upon seeing this depression-era period film was that no one could have ever been so stuffy, stupid, and socially constrained as the middle age/elderly couple played by Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward. But, then, I remembered that my grandparents were just like them, as were most of their contemporaries. What a limited life they led, and thank god for today's enlightenment.That women could have ever been so totally and willingly dependent, physically and mentally, on their husbands is now hard to imagine, but it did happen and was typical in the days when women did not work outside of the home. The film showed, over and over, dependency scenes that emphasized the helplessness and powerlessness of women in those depression era days. It got real aggravating after a while, but was offset somewhat by Woodward's character's inner goodness and sweetness. She was dumb as a mud fence, though.Newman was terrifically stuffy and dictatorial in his role and Woodward was terrifically dependent, incompetent, weak and stupid in hers. Wonderful work, and they both often had me steaming with their respective behavior, as I put up with a lot of this type of baloney when young. As their daughter, Kyra Sedgewick showed well that the "future" was going to be a lot different for women than the present by her unmistakable signs of emancipated behavior.The film's story was ended so well by Woodward's character getting stuck in her car in her garage, as she was so dependent and ignorant about how to do anything in life for herself that she sat in her car for hours without even trying to figure out a very easy solution to her problem. At the end, she was merely sitting there waiting and calling for many hours for others to "rescue" her from her easily solved predicament(if she only could have had an original thought), just as she had done all her incompetent and dependent life. What a great ending, and a great example of how not to be in real life. Thank god again that things have changed.

Although it was filmed in my home town, the novel written by a friend's uncle, the Bridge home about 6 blocks from mine, it was like watching home movies. Someone else's home movies. It truly had the same effect as embalming fluid would. The only redeeming quality I can think of, is if you live in Kansas City and get a tingle out of seeing some familiar buildings onscreen, this should really send you. It sent me off to sleep.