This film is pure and timeless gold, as out of character with its time as it is with present times. Jeff Bridges, Alan Arkin, Blythe Danner and Andy Griffith are perfectly cast in a comedy that spoofs both American innocence and American cynicism about that innocence. If "The Great Gatsby" is a classic story of the American Dream gone wrong, "Hearts of the West" is a classic rendering of the American Dream gone right in spite of itself.
This film is deceptively artful (e.g., the coherence provided by the leitmotif of the bad guys' increasingly dusty and dented automobile). Its "simplicity" is the "simplicity" of all great comedy, which deals with the essences as well as the particular manifestations of situations. (Moliere would have liked this one!) It's a film that makes you want to rewind it immediately and watch it again.
Five minutes into "Hearts of the West," I decided I had to own a copy. Funny, redemptive, and to be watched again and again. The laughs will not stale.
What I wonder is this: did Howard Zieff also intend it as a critique of the mindset and films of the mid-seventies? Because it is that.
Don't miss this one. It will brighten even the dreariest day!
This film is deceptively artful (e.g., the coherence provided by the leitmotif of the bad guys' increasingly dusty and dented automobile). Its "simplicity" is the "simplicity" of all great comedy, which deals with the essences as well as the particular manifestations of situations. (Moliere would have liked this one!) It's a film that makes you want to rewind it immediately and watch it again.
Five minutes into "Hearts of the West," I decided I had to own a copy. Funny, redemptive, and to be watched again and again. The laughs will not stale.
What I wonder is this: did Howard Zieff also intend it as a critique of the mindset and films of the mid-seventies? Because it is that.
Don't miss this one. It will brighten even the dreariest day!