Rosalie Goes Shopping

For those who love Brad Davis, this is a must see movie. It has charm, humor, tenderness, and solid performances all around. It's really about how someone in over their heads takes the system for a ride, and even though some plot moments are somewhat hard to believe, it's a movie you'll love if you let yourself go and enjoy it, without worrying about reality, logic, or whether or not it could "really happen." Brad Davis is handsome and wonderfully clueless as the crop duster with failing eyesight, while Marianne Sagebrecht turns in another of her superb performances as his devoted, spendthrift German wife.

In my opinion, it's a cult classic with lots of fun quotable lines. My favorite: "I can't believe the difference."

A buddy of mine watched this for the first time (it was my second or third) and he captured it perfectly: "It's like 'the Addams Family' in Arkansas, without the creepiness." He was right. If you like movies with small casts, that are quirky, feature great cinematography and use subtle humor to open a window to an interesting little corner of the world, this film is for you. Percy Adlon also works this magic with "Bagdad Cafe" and "Salmonberries." The only disappointment was singer Jim Lauderdale not releasing the equally endearing country/reggae fusion end credits song, "Flyin' Back to Rosalie," an absolute gem. I liked this movie so much, I actually went out of my way while driving across Arkansas to visit the town of Stuttgart, see the Riceland Mill and see the museum, all places where the film was shot.

Weird, surreal, silly, bad acting and not very funny.

This film takes the word "quirky" to a whole new level. While it is a little dated now, due to advances in computers (and the fact that Rosalie's computer crimes would not likely happen today), it is such a monumentally freakish film that you just can't miss it.

How can you miss seeing the late Brad Davis in one of his most unlikely roles? And how can you miss seeing Judge Reinhold as a priest who keeps having to listen to Rosalie teling him of all her crimes? The mere spetacle of Germans in rural Arkansas is reason enough to see this fun little film. It has no big message, really, except poking fun of 1980's American consumerism, but the sheer wackiness of the family in this movie makes it a worthwhile diversion for a night when you could use a laugh.

This movie is clearly a clever, subtle satire of banking systems. The tag line is the premise of the movie "When You're $100,000 In Debt, It's Your Problem. When You're $1,000,000 In Debt... It's The Bank's." Now, in 2010, we're seeing that if banks owe many billions of dollars, then it is the taxpayer's problem. Rosalie's problem has recently become a problem for all of us. This problem is not only limited to one country or banking system.

Rosalie is not a heroine, she is the personification of consumerism gone out-of-control, and a banking system that enables it. The movie really provides an underlying warning message. It should be required watching for anyone who wants to understand why things can easily go wrong in any banking system.

Although I first saw this movie in the early 1990s, I think it will make most sense to people now, in 2010!