Texasville (1990)

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

It is interesting even when nothing much happens, which is for most of its 3-hour running time. Read full review

If you're interested in the topic at hand, you should just watch it and judge yourself because the reviews have gone very biased by people that didn't even watch it and just hate (or love) the creator. I liked it, it was well written, narrated, and directed and it was about a topic that interests me.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Jacy Farrow(Cybill Shepherd)returns to Texasville where she was the homecoming queen for the town's celebrated Cintennial. Automatically old feelings are bound to return, though middle age has shaped Duane Jackson(Jeff Bridges)into a man who buries most of his feelings, yet he isn't prone to conflict. This film rarely has any outbursts despite the adulteries both Duane and his wife Karla(Annie Potts)are having on the side. Their marriage is one of many things focused on in this character study which can bring a multitude of emotions thanks in part to a cast who forms complex performances to the forefront. Returning from the original are Ruth Popper(Cloris Leachman)still very much in love with Sonny(Timothy Bottoms)who is slowly losing his grip on reality seeing things from the past which aren't there to anyone but him. Ruth is under the employ of Duane whose oil business is drowning in debt. Lester(Randy Quaid)is a banker now, Genevieve(Eileen Brennan)is still around as a gal Duane and others can chit chat with. Duane has a son, Dickie(William McNamara)who frequently dates various rich older women.Doesn't necessarily follow a plot narrative as much as the film is character-driven. We enter their lives at the Cintennial and watch as they go through the little quirky dramas. It isn't your usual drama and goes through various episodic dramas with Duane mostly at the center. What makes the film so odd is the way Duane and Karla remain together without ringing each others' necks. They know that each other jumps in and out of bed with others yet still maintain their family. Even weirder is how Jacy comes right into their lives, possibly a threat towards the marriage, yet she becomes quite good pals with Karla. Nothing operates the way you expect..I like this. I don't believe life follows a narrative thread. We all have our episodic dramas. There isn't always an exact end until we're under the grave. While the cast is very good, Annie Potts is just splendid while Bottoms as the tragic, troubled Sonny gains great sympathy for his mental plight. I just love to watch Bridges, especially when he won't reveal everything, yet when he does speak it often just makes simple sense. If you like heightened melodramas where characters scream and yell(..or, better yet, are directly confrontational), this film isn't for you.

Having never had the patience or the time of sitting through The Last Picture Show, I picked this movie up on a whim. I had seen once several years ago with my family and remembered it as being OK. For some unknown reason, I came across it at Amazon.com and decided to order it to watch it again. The second time I watched it, I enjoyed it, but some of the nuances of the movie seemed to be lacking. I suppose if I had seen the original movie I might have had more of an idea of what some of the plot twists meant. Annie Potts is at her best here playing the wife of the main character. Cybill Shepherd's character (Jaycee) while having just suffered the loss of a child seemed even more emotionless than one would expect after sustaining such a loss. I did enjoy the location of the movie (Texas) and the craziness of small town living.Overall the ensemble cast is decent, but the movie is somewhat long and tends to drag. There's also not much resolution at the end which disappointed me (I liked my movies to end with a nice wrap up or a decent "pull-together" at the end). If you enjoy any of the actors, it's worth watching.6/10

Director Peter Bogdanovich's failed follow-up to his critical breakthrough film, 1971's "The Last Picture Show", returns to small town Texas to catch up on the lives of those once-compelling characters. Bogdanovich, who--in a replay of the first film--also adapted Larry McMurtry's novel, is now too jaded to see much joy or dramatic irony in these surroundings, and the sterling cast he has assembled just seems disheartened. The plot, a rumination of Jeff Bridges' Duane Jackson (who is now an unhappily married oil-man dissatisfied with his job and life), doesn't built any momentum, emotional, dramatic or otherwise, and the director follows a botched pattern: one flabby, talky sequence after another. * from ****

Imagine that someone wrote a 1-hour dialoque for each of 10-20 characters and had them recite each part separately; but then edited it all together. Sound like a bad play? Yup.This is really about wallowing in the self-pity of middle age. The characters talk at each other but rarely connect or even interact. It's all about mouthing cheap lines.Bridges and all of his kids and all of his grandkids are horrible. His wife (Annie Potts) is the only slightly bright spot in the movie (actress and character).All of the main characters are in the midst of a crisis. Bridges teenage son is banging some of the married women - wives of his dad's friends. One wants to marry him; another is pregnant; another (or one of these two buys him a Porsche. Part way through the son he elopes and marries his trashy girlfriend; then he files for divorce after fighting with her.I think that Bogdanovich wanted this to be an examination of the pain of living: birth, death, disappointment, craziness, losing wealth - all the big issues. Instead it's just a poorly storied and acted soap opera.Don't waste your time.