The movie follows the lives of a mother and daughter- over-powering Aurora Greenway (Shirley MacLaine) and free-spirited Emma Horton (Debra Winger). While Emma marries Flap (yes that is his real name) (Jeff Daniels), moves away to Iowa and has 3 children, Aurora conducts a relationship with her predatory and vivacious ex-astronaut neighbour, Garrett Breedlove (again, that IS his real name) (Jack Nicholson).
Doug says...
Terms of Endearment is what I thought Ordinary People was going to be. It’s a full, overblown family drama, complete with an obligatory ‘character-gets-cancer’ storyline and over-the-top approaching-melodrama acting. I’d love to say it goes over and above the triteness of such frippery filled pieces, but unfortunately it lands slap bang in the middle of the cliched genre.
I think where I fell away from this film was when I saw the description of it as ‘offbeat’. Offbeat usually means ‘unusual’ or ‘quirky’ but here I take that label quite literally. It misses the beats that it sets out to achieve. Moments that would be incredibly funny somehow just miss the comic timing beat. Moments that would verge on the emotional and heart-wrending also miss their timing, resulting in what feels often overwrought and not really steeped in real emotion.
It’s another big outing for Shirley MacLaine (who we last saw in The Apartment) and while I liked her performance more here, it still didn’t quite ring true for me. She’s overbearing and terrifying, yet utterly devoted to her daughter, while also sniping at her without cease. It’s a Dickensian stereotype but (a little like Mary Tyler Moore in Ordinary People) we don’t get to see much beyond the surface.
The director apparently went out of his way to cause tension on set as he preferred working that way (creatives eh?!) and the improvised nature of many of the scenes is very obvious. Jack Nicholson and MacLaine bounce off each other well and in many ways their relationship (overblown as it is) is the main highlight of the film. The other storyline, focusing on the daughter is dull, partially thanks to Debra Wing’s not-great performance. Apparently she was coming down off of cocaine while doing this, but you might have thought her performance would be a bit more sparky for that. Ah well.
It’s not a bad film by any means, but with the standard of the ‘80s already highly promising, it’s a tad disappointing to find this incredibly middle of the road film being crowned supreme. Perhaps it was a dud year for film-making.
Highlight
Jack Nicholson has a lot of fun as a drunken, roaring old astronaut, including a scene on the beach where he drives his sports car standing with his feet on the wheel, MacLaine grimly operating the pedals next to him and shouting ‘I am not enjoying this’ at him. It’s one of the few comic moments that really landed.
Lowlight
It got too slushy without enough real heart, and the last half hour dragged on.
Mark
5/10
Paul says...
How does one create an ‘80s movie? Well, according to Delia’s Movie Cook Book, you need an emotional tale about a family in some sort of crisis or crises; a whimsical piano-driven soundtrack that doesn’t over-stimulate; some platitudinous speeches or conversations about love, life, death etc; a gratuitously bittersweet ending; a nauseating amount of florals in the costumes and set design; at least one socio-political issue to discuss didactically.
And that’s basically Terms of Endearment. Even it’s mother-daughter-centric storyline pretty much turns it into a heavily-truncated season of The Gilmore Girls, with some Knot’s Landing thrown in for good measure. The fundamental problem is that so much happens in it that the story has no focus whatsoever. About 30 years pass between the beginning and the end and in that time births, marriages, extra-marital affairs; deaths; long-term illnesses; short-term illnesses (the baby has croup, oh God no!); moves to new locations; all of this is thrown at you so thick and fast that I had no time to digest or engage with any of it. All interspersed with irregular fade-outs to black and lovely, gentle, twee music that ensures anyone over the age of 70 can watch a film that mentions abortion once. It’s a similar problem that the second half of Gone With the Wind has.
The entire film is also extremely inconsequential. These various events happen and we move on to the next one with little or no reflection or later reference. Like a badly-written soap opera, Terms of Endearment seemed to be getting made up as it goes along (and it may well have been). Yes, I know, this is very reflective of life and it’s randomness, but I don’t watch a film to see reality. I want escapism.
I didn’t rate Debra Winger much either, despite the acclaim she gets for this. I get that her character, as the youthful daughter, is meant to be more impulsive and rebellious than her prudish mother, but Winger swings dramatically between big expressions of these aspects of her character, and the more subtle, gentle acting styles that MacLaine seems to be prefer. There’s not much consistency and therefore the character feels vague. She also apparently had a feud with MacLaine (Wikipedia is a little vague on this one), so it feels judicious that MacLaine should walk away with the Best Actress Oscar that they were both nominated for.
Ah yes, Shirley MacLaine. The one saving grace. I loved her in 1960’s winner, The Apartment, in which she could evoke everyday mannerisms and line deliveries whilst also oozing effortless charisma. Here, she is similarly strong, and deserves all the more praise for giving life into a lifeless script. In one scene in which she climbs the stairs to Garrett’s porch, she shows through body language alone that she is reluctantly admitting to her attraction to this obnoxious pig, is giving into it, and also amused at her own hesitation. The character is by far the best drawn out- a closeted bundle of insecurities and loneliness, heavily disguised by a hard-nosed, steely-eyed exterior. The rest of the cast pale in comparison- even Jack Nicholson felt like he was on auto-pilot to me. Go Shirley!
True, the film was a large hit. True, MacLaine’s character and storyline are far more engaging. But the fact that the film jumps all over the place in time and content leaves me cold and unengaged towards it. Ordinary People had a similar tone, but it was far superior due to its focus on the aftermath of a family death, and because it had bigger things to say about grief, mental health and how a certain class of people deal with these things. Watch that, instead. Not this bromidic rubbish.
Highlight
Altogether now: GIVE MY DAUGHTER THE SHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOTTTTTT!!!!
Lowlight
Debra Winger’s overrated performance. Again, Go Shirley!
Mark
3/10
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