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Some worthwhile performances here. The film does suffer from comparisons to "The Last Picture Show". That film was astonishing in its originality and has become iconic. "Texasville" neither aims so high, nor lands so hard. Nonetheless, the whole atmosphere of sadness calls to mind TLPS, as does the lack of a musical score, the only background being radios or whatever that the characters also hear. The adult characters, who were teen-agers in TLPS never seem to have grown up. At all. As Ebert said, I wonder what Sam the Lion would think of all these people. I seem to have missed all the sex going on in the '50's (OK wasn't born yet) and missed it again in the 80's. Maybe I'll catch that train SOMEDAY.

Jeff Bridges put in a great performance here, just as he always does. He never seems to play a character you don't believe. This in films as disparate as this one, "The Fabulous Baker Boys", and, say, "The Big Lebowski". Cybill Shepherd was very good and very beautiful. It probably took some amount of courage for a former model/beauty queen to take this role, that explicitly compares her middle-aged looks to her youthful pulchritude. I thought she still looked great. (But then, I'm middle-aged) Cloris Leachman showed her dramatic talent to wonderful effect. But, saving the best for last, I thought Annie Potts basically stole the show. She was gorgeous, and she so totally nailed her character. Acting doesn't get much better than this.

Anyone who liked TLPS (and that's almost everyone) should see this sequel. But don't carry into it unrealistic expectations.

Unless you saw Peter Bogdanovich's classic The Last Picture Show, if you even start at the beginning of Texasville you'll feel like you've walked in on the film in the middle and have to catch up. I'm not sure the film is capable of standing on its feet so to speak.

Anarene, Texas in The Last Picture Show is about the passing away of the old values that gave Texas the culture it has, the small town looks like it's about to shrivel and blow away like a tumbleweed as that film ended. But in the intervening thirty years, the town seems to have experienced a renaissance due to oil and the high prices it commands for energy. If you remember in Urban Cowboy, John Travolta leaves home and hearth in a place that looks like Anarene for a job in the Houston petrochemical industry which was booming in 1980.

But if you also remember between those years the OPEC nations let loose a glut of oil on the world market which drove the price down worldwide. The bank that Jeff Bridges is now the head of is caught in a nice financial squeeze investing in some wells locally that better produce and soon. Sad to say that's another historical point that might even get lost on an audience 25 years later.

Still of the half a dozen or so cast members who repeated their roles from The Last Picture Show in Texasville, materially Bridges has made out the best. But he's also got a wife in Annie Potts who's bored with the marriage, half a dozen kids, including William McNamara who's having sex with half the women in the town. Just a chip off the old block. Bridges facing financial ruin just about caps things off for the Jackson family.

Cybill Shepherd the teen dream queen of the Fifties went to Europe and became an actress, but whose marriage to a continental fizzled and a son died. Rich and somewhat dissipated, she's just back to her roots.

Timothy Bottoms the other half of the running backs from the high school with Bridges has not done really well. He owns a greasy spoon eatery and he's getting by. But he's struck with a mysterious malady which could be anything from a brain tumor to early onset Alzheimer's. We never really find out in Texasville.

Texasville has ambitions to be a character study like Long Day's Journey Into Night and these people are interesting though not the same league as the Tyrone family. But the film, interesting in spots though it is, relies too much on its roots from The Last Picture Show to stand on its own.

Since nothing could be as good as last picture show- I am glad this took a turn to comedy- Duane is a mess- he says things to his wife like " I'd like you to wear something I didn't have to read" . But Annie Potts is great as his sassy wife. I was a little disappointed by Cybill Shepherd's character-- I thought Jacy would grow up more spunky-- but Cloris Leachman matured nicely in her character... I was most confused by what happened to Sonny-- he truly did get tired in the head.... but the sub-plots of the stud son, the daughter who went on a honeymoon every time she met a boy and the twins tricks keep the film moving... but its no equal to the original story of the Texas town immortalized in Last Picture Show.

Very few sequels are worth watching. The Godfather Part II is the only one I can think of that is worth a dime. Like many sequels, Texasville should never have been made. When film reaches the heights of The Last Picture Show, any attempt to re-capture the magic is doomed to failure. I awaited the release of Texasville with great anticipation, but what followed was a great disappointment. The Last Picture Show is one of the 10 best films ever made. Texasville is not one of the best 1000. When Sam the Lion died, the whole town went down hill anyway.

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

Although I like Annie Potts, I think she was miscast, even though she did a good job as Karla. Karla should have been a tall, Texas blonde-type. Annie got Karla's personality down, but after the book, a petite brunette just didn't fit the bill. Overall, though--Texasville was a disappointment. Movies are rarely as good as books--this I realize--but Texasville was a huge disappointment. Part of it was the period made--the late 80's and early 90's produced few good films. And Texasville, to me, felt more like an average sitcom than a movie.

To return again to the book vs movie them--I do believe a great movie can be made from a great book, especially most of Larry McMurtry's. Lonesome Dove was superb, as of course was The Last Picture Show. Perhaps the problem was that Texasville is funny, as opposed to heavy, like Picture Show. And funny is harder to do without being sitcom-like. Texasville seemed to me to be lacking balance (as a picture--the book was plenty balanced).

On first viewing I would have voted a 5. But something stuck with me and I've watched the movie - studied the movie - about 8 or 9 times now ... in three weeks. Texasville is brilliant. True to 80s American oil country livin', wonderfully shot to capture big-sky light, and so full of detail one or two or even three viewings are not enough. I'd say the density of nuance is easily twice the standard movie average. That many will dislike this movie is not surprising. Contrary to first impressions, Texasville is not popular culture. As a cut above, this movie will fly right on by most viewers - particularly those many who will not or cannot relate to anything in it. But for those of us who've lived some Texasville ... many thanks are owed Peter, Larry, Cybil, Jeff and the rest.

Interesting film, it seems that is a real life where everybody does more or less what he/she wants. Jeff Bridges is a rich man, but near to bankruptcy due to many debts, married to a very nice lady (Annie Potts, whom it would have been much better to keep her than to look at others less beautiful than her)with several sons and daughters, living in a large house where everybody did what he/she wanted and were all somewhat hysteric. Bridges tried to escape and to behave like a bee smelling each flower he finds around, some of them wives of his supposed friends. Suddenly a former classmate of Bridges, the actress Jacy Farrow, arrives in the town and starts looking at Bridges asking him for love and sex. It is difficult to understand how his wife (Annie Potts) accepted all this relationship. She could have been the most smartly developed woman of the world, but to accept his husband playing with another woman candidate, it is only seen in films. The end of the film does not give any solution to the problem, but puts the things how really are in the modern society.

Good sequel to the superb The Last Picture Show, also directed by Peter Bogdanovich, 19 years earlier. Whereas The Last Picture Show dealt with the decline of small-town America, Texasville shows it still exists, but barely. Focuses on the lives of several middle- aged people, mostly the main characters from The Last Picture Show, and how their hopes and dreams have faded and reality is less pleasant.

The feeling of nostalgia, of tedium, of lives going nowhere, yet hope within that emptiness, is tangible. Among this drama, there is great humour, however.

Superb performances all round. This role was probably the one that turned Jeff Bridges into the downtrodden, bedraggled anti-hero, and launched countless roles for home. Cybill Shepherd is solid as Jacy. Next to Bridges, the star turn belongs to Annie Potts who is simultaneously beautiful, funny, sassy and intelligent as Karla.

Ultimately doesn't really make as big an impression as The Last Picture Show, and sort of fizzles out towards the end. The destination is quite tame, but the journey is worth taking.

I'm not a fellow who has any position to take on sequels or remakes; some are good, some are not -- simple as that. So when I express profound disappointment at this, it's not out of reactionary indignation that the film doesn't meet whatever needs or expectancies I have; it's simply a lousy movie.

It's difficult to believe that TEXASVILLE shares the same pedigree as THE LAST PICTURE SHOW. Where PICTURE SHOW is humane, this is almost nihilistic; the humans are props on which cardboard foibles are hung. (For further insult, we are expected to ride along and laugh at the various infidelities and episodes of arrested adolescence, as if these things were charming and acceptable.) The story whiffs of the first draft, desperately needing revision and clearer thinking; that "more more more" means everyone in the film has their schtick, and no one ever gets fleshed out beyond that. And some of it is awfully bad. Larry... Peter... what in the world were you thinking of wrote Timothy Bottoms' character like so? No doubt, he could have had problems, but this is as bad as junior high school poetry.

Sometimes I actually think I like it better than THE LAST PICTURE SHOW but that's only now, after having seen TEXASVILLE, oh, fifteen, twenty times.

It's too easy to blow this movie off as being strange and not making sense -- I see that as its strength; it's *real*. It's oddly real, it's real in a way that most movies aren't; nothing ties up, there's no plot arc, people don't do what they're supposed to. But if you watch it as evidence of McMurtry's genius characterization, you'll see that the people in this film are tremendously human, and weird and flawed.

Annie Potts as Duane's wife Karla is really the standout performance in this sequel, though the rest of the principal cast from PICTURE SHOW are, IMHO, just as spectacular here. Potts adds something to the mix that allows a unique perspective on this weird little town, and, like Duane, you see her for all her flaws and you love her just for putting up with you.

And, really, is there *anything* sadder than Jacy wooing Duane's dog away?

See this film more than once before you judge it; that's all I've got to say.

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 ****

I haven't seen the legendary "Last Picture Show', to which this is supposed to be a 30-years-later sequel, but it couldn't have been as bad as this. A bunch of not very likable people (except for Bridges' character, who has a charming and weather-beaten kind of savoir faire) wander around aimlessly, seducing each other's spouses (which somehow never seems to get anyone really upset) and mouthing inanities about how miserable they are. After 2 hours of this ennui, it ends abruptly with no kind of closure; everybody just goes to breakfast together. Bridges and Leachman do a good job but they can't rescue the leaden script. About the only thing the film does well is capture the flavor and atmosphere of rural Texas during its economic crunch of the early 80's.

Texasville is easily one of my favorite movies of all time because it doesn't go down the easy road, trying to please everyone, by being the same movie as Last Picture Show was. However, after having seen both Picture Show and Texasville back to back I noticed how surprisingly similar in context and theme they are. Both are about sad adults who look longingly onto the younger generation, all the while committing adultery as a way of recapturing their youth. I love both Picture Show and Texasville equally; but have a soft spot for Texasville because I was 11 during the timeframe shown in the movie, and 17 when it came out in 1990 so it is a bit more relevant to me. Also the dark humor helps make the film more enjoyable for those hot summer nights when the urge hits me to see it.

I've never thought of Texasville as fiction, more as cinematic fact. It's about as close to real life as you'll get without living it yourself. It was one of the first films I saw in a theatre as a cinema "connoisseur" and it'd be a shame to let it fade into obscurity. I highly recommend it to anyone reading this, a true minor masterpiece

Would the Peter Bogdanovich who make The Last Picutre Show have made this? I don't think so.

It scored a high dull rating. Maybe Peter should have got a script writer in, or taken some early advice. Peter had the cast, the location, the talent, so, how come this film came into its dullness.

The last ten minutes gave a taste for what the film should have been.

Mostly focusing on Jeff Bridges was pointless, he did his best strut, but that ain't enough to carry any film.

This film is classifed as comedy, um, someone must be laughing at us for spending money to watch this.

Well, I want to know what the hell happened how can this movie be the sequel to the wonderful "Last Picture Show". "Picture Show" gave us an excellent story and compassionate characters. "Texasville" is awful, Cybil Shepard is so annoying as Jacy and who cares about her pathetic life now...she was a spoiled brat in "picture Show" and in this she is the same but now she is a lead character, in the "Last Picture Show" she was a side character as is Jeff Bridges character Duane. Timothy Bottoms was the star and in "Texasville" he is nothing, his story line is awful. He just wonders around with a tired head and a sad lonely life. Maybe Timothy Bottoms does do a good job looking sad, lonely and depressed I wonder why??. Sonny was so great in "Picture Show" why didn't he get a decent story?? Why is there no story in Texasville at all. The big thing is Duane is in debt and him and Jacy are in a stupid play together. I don't think they even mention that Jacy and Sonny ran off and got married or if they did mention any thing from the past it was short and sweet like the love story between sonny and cloris leachman character, Ruth Popper what happened there. She says "He loved me once" so now he stays in my trailer and she exercises all the time in the movie maybe because she once was married to a gym teacher who knows maybe somewhere there is symbolism but unfortunately I never cared enough to look. The movie has a small climax where I think Sonny might have attempted suicide well then jeff bridges suggest that they all go and get breakfast at the local DQ and everything will work out. Of course the viewer never finds out because that would have been to hard to put substance into this movie. So La DI Da it's over. I mean I know Cybil Shepard and Jeff Bridges are the most popular actors in the movie but to move so far away from the original and really just make a depressing sad little movie. Everybody is having affairs and all the kids are brats no wonder this is the most dysfunctional town in the world. I wasted two hours on this film and now I have to go rent the original to get this bad taste out of my mouth from Texasville.

I have to say, I was so disappointed with this movie that I actually didn't finish it. Now, I will have to admit that it is a lot easier, for me, to not finish a movie than it is to not finish a novel, nevertheless, I just couldn't get thru this movie. And, I have just this very moment of writing this review that I think I know what it was like for me. It was like watching an extremely long 'Coming Attraction', i.e., a long series of vignettes without really ever knowing what was really going on. Let me say here that I read the trilogy ("Last Picture Show", "Texasville" and "Duane's Depressed") and will admit that I found "Texasville", the novel, frivilous but, the cinematic version took that particular novel to a new level of?, of?, apathetic boredom. I think what I am trying to say is that, while the novel was frivolus, at least I became acquainted with the persona of the characters. I thought that while I might have wished something else was happening *for* them, at least I had a sense of who they were and what their reason d'etres were. The movie was a total disappointment.

It is sad that it is very unlikely that "Duane's Depressed" will never make it to the screen but then again, if the treatment were to be similar to the treatment of "Texasville" I think I am glad. "Duane's Depressed" was by far, the most masterfully crafted of the triology.

After reading a book written by Cybill Shepherd entitled,"Cybill Disobedience", where she describes in detail a great deal of the behind the scenes in the making of this picture and also "The Last Picture Show". Cybill also mentions the director of this picture, Peter Bogdanovich, a very long time warm and affectionate friend. Cybill played the role as (Jacy Farrow),"The Last Picture Show",'71,along with Jeff Bridges (Duane Jackson). These two were teenage's in high school and did more than skinny dip in the lake. Jacy was a movie star who returned to her hometown after very tragic events in her life and needed the comfort from all her home town friends, especially Duane and his family, including mostly his wife. Cloris Leachman(Ruth Popper),"Never Too Late",'97, gave a great supporting role along with Eileen Brennan(Geneuieve Morgan),"Private Benjamin",'80. Peter Boganovich tried to make this picture into a masterpiece like his award winning "The Last Picture Show" and also "Targets", starring Boris Karloff, but this picture did not quite measure up to his high standards of Directing! Cybill Shepherd & Jeff Bridges great acting skills made this film worth WATCHING!

Otherwise, it would be just a frenetic soap opera. Even with Bridges' effort it's not nearly as good as "...Picture Show". And the ending is so lousy - nothing is resolved, you're not sure what's gonna happen, and everybody goes off for breakfast. I gave it a 7 and that was being charitable.