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MacLaine, Nicholson shine in trenchant ‘ Endearment’By Michael BurkettThe RegisterThe holiday season wouldn’t be complete, it seems, without a movie about a cheerful, charming free-spirited soul who is struck down in the prime o’ life by an incurable disease.It is our good fortune that this season’s entry is “Terms of Endearment” — which is not only one of the least maudlin tearjerkers ever to dampen a shirt sleeve, but also a riotous, brilliantly acted and truly perceptive comedy about such generally unfunny subjects as aging, selfishness, love gone haywire, divorce, rude grocery clerks, and that most common experience in our daily lives: plain, ordinary desperation.Adapted from a novel by Larry McMurty, this first film from director/scenarist James L. Brooks (one of the creators of television’s “Mary Tyler Moore Show,” “Lou Grant” and “Taxi”) spans 30 years in the rocky lives of Aurora Greenway (Shirley MacLaine), a rich, much-pursued widow, and her much more down-to-earth daughter, Emma (Debra Winger).Aurora believes, from the bottom of her cold, manipulative heart, that the key to eternal happiness is in maintaining absolute control over those around her — particularly Emma, who has, since childhood, resisted playing the role of her mother’s Barbi Doll.Imagine, then, Mom’s dismay when Emma decides to marry penniless young English professor Flap Horton (Jeff Daniels), a move which Aurora promises “will ruin your life and make wretched your destiny.” ' Some months later, Aurora is even more despondent when informed by the beaming newlyweds that they are expecting. Why isn’t she happy? “Happy? she screams to everyone within a radius of 74 upper-class suburban blocks.“I'm supposed to be happy about 'being a grandmother!?!?”By the time the kid is old enough to talk, however, it looks like Aurora has adjusted to grandmotherhood.: And she has, to a degree, even though she still de-, mands that her grandson refer to her as “Mrs. Greenway.”Yes, Aurora is softening — and on her way to her - first hot and heavy love affair with next-door neighbor (Jack Nicholson),-a paunchy, womanizing slob of a former astronaut who thinks The Right Stuff is a loaf : of bread, a bottle of Jim Beam and a 17-year-old“Terms of Endearment.” A Paramount Picture. Produced written and directed by James L Brooks. Based on a novel by Larry McMurtry. Director of photography Andrzej Bartkowiak. Editor Richard Marks. Music by Michael Gore. With Shirley MacLaine, Debra Winger, Jack Nicholson, Danny DeVito, John Lithgow, Jeff Daniels, Lisa Hart Carroll, Betty R. King, Huckleberry Fox, Troy Bishop and Shane Serwin. Running time: 2 hours and 9 minutes. Rated PG. Opens today at selected Orange County theaters.cheerleader who owns her own diaphragm.Meanwhile, Emma is finding out that life minus Mom isn’t the paradise she’d expected. In no time at all, she has three kids, a failing marriage, a timid bank clerk (John Lithgow) for a lover, no money, no career, and an equal amount of hope.But both characters are on their way to coming to terms with each other and themselves, if not the rough and tumble, consistently unfair world at large.Outside of the brightest, wittiest dialogue in one or two eons, what makes Brooks’ characters so special is that, as obnoxious, self-centered or boorish as they can be, they are constantly evolving into new and improved human beings.And when they aren’t growing at a spectacular rate — such as Nicholson’s astronaut — it is because they have thrown in the towel in favor of easier pursuits. One of Nicholson’s best moments, in fact, comes after he has made a hilarious, woman-eatiftg jerk out of himself during his first over-the-fence encounter with MacLaine. “God,” he mutters to himself, “I can be such an ass.” And then, almost gleefully, he continues to be an ass.Several years after their breakup (he dumps her out of fear of commitment), Maclaine is momentarily reunited with Nicholson at an airport. She blurts out that she loves him and then, as if no time had passed, begins quizzing him about the other women in his life. Catching herself, she stops in mid-interrogation with the most sincere “But I don’t care, who cares, I’m glad you came” she can muster. They part, but MacLaine chases him back down. “What do you ususally say when a woman says she loves you?” shecisks*“My stock answer,” he says, flashing his crooked Crybaby Killer smile. “I love you, too.”Countless moments like these — at once hilarious, discomfiting and, finally, a little sad — make “TermsCRITIC’S CHOICE: MOVIESSometimes it seems to take forever to get certain movies to Orange County. This week we’re lucky, though, because the critically acclaimed.'‘Heart Like a Wheel” has opened at the UA South Coast Cinema, 1561W. Sunflower, Costa Mesa.This biography of Shirley Muldowney has critics gushing over the performance of Bonnie Bedelia. In fact, a lot of film fans are talkingabout a Best Actress Academy Award nomination for Bedelia’s strong and sensitive* portrayal of the world’s first professional woman drag racer.“Heart Like a Wheel” is not so much a film about drag racing as it is a film about the tenacity of the human spirit. The movie also stars Beau Bridges, Leo Rossi and Hoyt Axton.— Vern PerryDebra Winger, Shirley MacLaine are daughter and mother in Terms of Endearment.’from now will be those of MacLaine and Nicholson. Even their staunchest fans will not be prepared for the daring comic chances they take with their potentially despicable characters; risks they survive m grand style under Brooks’ delicate, sure-handed direction.MacLaine, nowadays a criminally underused actress, is one of the few Hollywood-trained stars still working in films who, with each successive role, seems to learn from the camera instead of trying to compete with it. Her portrait of Aurora Greenway combines layers of wicked humor, subtlety and ageless beauty in a performance of hair-raising candor.Nicholson, however, deserves double honors. In addition to his terrific on-screen work (especially his needle-sharp interplay with MacLaine), he is to be commended for being one of the few major American film stars not afraid to accept less than dashmg roles of less than movie-star size. In his first film since his Oscar-nominated supporting performance as Eugene O’Neill in “Reds,” Nicholson further establishes himself as one of our finest actors — and most generous starsBut the best thing about “Terms of Endearment’1 is what the terrifically talented James L. Brooks has to say about people and. more important, how he says it. In an age where movies tend to pound emotional buttons without touching our lives, it’s great to happen upon a filmmaker who deserves every belly laugh and damp eye he provokes.of Endearment” as human as any comedy that has been made in the last decade.Winger (in her fourth and most demanding film role), actor/chameleon Lithgow (the transsexual in last year’s “The World According to Garp”) and the entire supporting cast — which includes “Taxi’s” Danny DeVito as one of Aurora’s many suitors, a part that appears to have been shortened in the editing room — are marvelous. Enlivening the film with wonderfully contrasting types, they are always honest and natural, always in control of themselves and their material.Still, the performances you will remember years
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Santa Ana Orange County Register
Santa Ana, California, US
Fri, Nov 25, 1983
Page 256
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USA 19 Jul 2022
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