This movie has an okay story, a bit in the road-trip theme, and Eastwood's son, Kyle, is an okay actor, but the other actors don't impress me much. Eastwood didn't seem to care much about making the movie an authentic "period piece", and you will often see details in the background from modern times, as well as the haircuts, which are obviously from the early 80's. Several times he shows musicians and they seemed to put the least amount of effort into looking authentic. At the Grand 'Ol Opry, the female singer who is on after Eastwood is singing in a modern style, and anyone who listens to music from the 1930's knows that doesn't fit. Even the music the bands are playing has a 70's/80's sound to it. Maybe they should have got T-Bone Burnett as musical director! They could have had a band on in the vein of the Carter Family, instead. I guess they had a limited budget and it shows, but it could have been a much better movie than it turned out to be. Other things I noticed were, the cement curbs in the really luxurious looking cemetery in the film with all the green grass and trees...excuse me, this is in the 1930's, and as far as I can tell, most graveyards didn't look that maintained, as there was little money. Little things like that that kind of ruin the illusion of a rough period in the US. Even the cars sitting outside the Ryman Theater are highly polished and obviously collector pieces rented for the film and the owners didn't want to get any dust on them. With all the detail Eastwood put into his later masterpiece films, I am a little disappointed, but it is still a decent movie, I gave it a 6 out of 10.
Review of Honkytonk Man
