Uncertain Terms

I recently decided to roll the dice on another revered Oscar-winning Best Picture from the past, 1983's Terms of Endearment. It's predominately a quirky little comedy, but notoriously well known for its tear-jerking ending -- that wasn't going to come as a surprise to me.

What did surprise me is that I didn't find it tear-jerking at all; for most of the film, I didn't even find it particularly funny.

The movie starts out fairly strong, defining a cast of interesting characters with rough edges. Shirley MacLaine plays a near-lunatic mother, a role for which she won an Oscar herself. Debra Winger is her forgiving daughter, a role for which she lost the Oscar to her co-star. Jack Nicholson also won an Oscar here, for playing basically an only-slightly fictionalized version of himself -- this guy's an astronaut; Nicholson in real life only seems like he's from outer space. John Lithgow appears in a role for which he lost the Oscar to his co-star (but given his limited and ill-developed role in the movie, I can't really see why he got nominated, as much as I do like him). Jeff Daniels is here too, overlooked for any award recognition in spite of the fact he gives the best performance among the men in the film.

But after about 30 rather pleasant minutes of smiles, the movie starts to get tedious. There simply isn't much of a story or a message here. Guess what, mothers and daughter have strange relationships! And here's one! After another hour of no content to justify why this story is being told about this particular family, in soars a cancer storyline from out of the blue to sucker punch the audience.

Was the notion that a rather light-hearted movie could suddenly turn on a dime really so revolutionary in 1983? I can't see awarding this film an Oscar for any other reason. It started nice enough, and had fine acting throughout, but I found myself uncomfortable (that is, bored -- not uncomfortable in any intended way) long before the end credits rolled.

I give Terms of Endearment a C-, adding it to the list of critically-lauded movies that I found unimpressive.