This is a troubling movie to review. It's neither not good. More good pass the time movie fare in the world of ordinary, although you do get caught up in the characters and their hardships, problems, aspirations, mistakes, etc. It's well acted by all, and if you're a C Thomas Howell fan, like me, it's a plus, although like Soul Man, here, I didn't buy that Oceanography was his passion, a similar study to what the late Paul Walker did, him choosing marine biology. Anyhow, he gets caught up in an affair with an older woman, the always capable and talented Jamie Lee Curtis. Her best friend and ex lover (the late Swayze) a car derby driver who revels in his profession, is now going out with a trashy, but delicious looking sort (Jennifer Jason Leigh, in one of the film's standout and memorable performances) who's doing others, besides him. It is fun watching Swayze, get angry and go ballistic, and just watch what happens, when provoked. The film has an average script, and less so plot, but one feels the movie is not built around that. It only has video appeal. It'd bomb at the cinema. If you disregard that, and just live through the characters here, you'll come off okay, while a plus, is being a Christopher Howell fan. Another asset is two dream sequences, one featuring Howell in a choreographed dancing number in front of a locomotive, surrounding by an entourage of beauties and studs, where the prize inside the carriage is Jamie Lee Curtis who I myself, has never found this horror icon, attractive. Also an intimate lovemaking scene, on the derby ground, between the more mature Curtis and younger gent, Howell, in a brake locked car, which executes a perfect donut. An enjoyable time passer with memorable moments, and characters, but don't look higher than that. Here too, before Soul Man, Howell takes one in the gulliver.
Review of Grandview, U.S.A.
