Texasville

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.