I saw it again after The Last Picture Show to see why that was so great and this so poor. Was it the adaptation? I read the novel... the novel is poor. Maybe that's unfair - it's nothing like The Last Picture Show. It feels like something Larry McMurtry wrote to write something: his style is always pleasant. One wonders if he did it with one eye on a book sale, with the novel being dedicated to Cybil Shepherd, who had come back with Moonlighting, and the bigger role given to Duane/Jeff Bridges rather than Sonny/Tim Bottoms.
The flaws of the film are the flaws of the novel: aimlessness, all the comedy, all the cartoons. Duane's kids are cartoons (root rat son, trashy daughter, wild twins).
The strengths of the film are the strengths of the novel: the character of Karla (played by Annie Potts brilliantly), the journey of Jacy an Duane, the problems of Sonny.
Compare the original: it had a sense of the past, a time and place, a universality (about being young and in love), the novelty of sex. The characters were all individual and had their moment: Jacy, Duane, Sonny, yes, but also consider the monologues given to Sam, Ruth, Ellen Burstyn (sorry can't remember character names). The details like the local pedophile and the stripping party.
This has none of that. A silly centenary celebration. A town recovering from a boom.
Jacy lost a child but she never gets a monologue about it. She and Karla (Potts) bond straight away. It seems like a threesome might be on which would have livened it up.
The townsfolk that Duane and his son sleep with are cartoons.
Compare it to the documentary made about the making of this - Picture This. That is much better.
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