User Reviews

**SPOILERS** Somewhat different kind of movie-by its title- that you would expect to see with the focus being on this young beach-combing drifter Tom Skelton, Peter Fonda,in sunny and out of the way Key West Florida trying to start up a fishing guide business just to keep himself busy.

Tom soon runs into trouble with those fishing guides who are established in Key West Nichol Dank, Warren Oates, and Cart Carter, Harry Dean Stanton, who feel that he's cutting into their profits. It's when Nichol plays a dirty trick on Tom that left him both high and dry, and knee deep in the Key West swamps, that he retaliated by torching Nichol's fishing boat. The rest of the movie has Nichol trying to get even with Tom that leads to a major confrontation on his fishing boat that's more comical then anything else.

Both Fonda and Oates seem to be having such a real good time doing the movie that they have trouble convincing the audience that their really bitter enemies and willing to go so far, at least in Oates case, to kill each other. There's also William Hickey as Tom's bed ridden dad and Burgess Meredeth as his shyster lawyer grandpa Goldsboro. Both father and son have been at odds with each other for years ever since pop, Hickey, refused give grandpa, Meredeth, a freebie at the whorehouse he once ran in town. Gramps is also having a hard time with his secretary Bella, Sylvia Miles, who's mind is on how to screw him out of all his money, that's to go to his old lady, then in him keeping most of it.

To round things off there's also Cart's daffy wife Jennie, Elizabeth Ashley, who's shopping sprees are just about bankrupting him as well as Tom's teacher girlfriend Miranda played by a pre-Lois Lane and sexy Margot Kidder. It's Miranda's relationship with Tom that leads to a major cat-fight, in Jennie making light of it, between her and Jennie at a seaside picnic that livened things up a bit when the movie was stuck on neutral. Just when you thought that you've seen it all in pops Ollie Slatt, Joe Spinell, with a free coupon for a fishing trip that he, the way he acts, has been eagerly looking forwarded to for his entire adult life!

There's not much of a plot in "92 in the Shade" but the interaction between the films zany characters, especially Tom & Nicol, more then makes up for the films very simplistic storyline. There's also the added attraction of the scenic Florida location that gives the movie a travelogue-like effect. It in fact makes to want to get in your car or go to the nearest airport bus or train station and get a ticket for Key West and, if your lucky enough, run into the same kind of interesting and off-the-wall characters that you've seen in the film.

Talking to a family friend about movies he was after,I got told about a title starring Peter Fonda and Warren Oates which has completely appears to have fallen off the face of the earth.After not being able to find a Video or DVD of the movie,I was very happy to hear from a DVD seller that they had tracked down the film,which led to me getting ready to finally relax in the shade.

The plot:

Walking into a fishing town, Tom Skelton decides to set up his own charter fishing business.Being the owner of the business on all things fishing related in town, Nichol Dance decides to give Skelton a warm local welcome by trying to burn his business down.Getting shown the door by everyone in town,Skelton decides to step out of the shade and take Dance on.

View on the film:

Made as writer/director Thomas McGuane's life was in free-fall, (he got divorced from his first wife Becky Crockett, (who went on to marry Shade star Fonda)got married to Margot Kidder,and started an affair with Kidder's Shade co-star Elizabeth Ashley!)McGuane's shows a surprising level of confidence in his lone directing credit,thanks to McGuane & cinematographer Michael C. Butler basking the film in lush yellows and blues which turn the rivalry into a boiling hot affair.

Adapting his own novel, McGuane gives the screenplay a fever dream atmosphere. Following Tom Skelton's drift into town,McGuane gives Skelton's battle with Nichol Dance a sweet dreamy edge,as everyone around them appears unconscious over how deep their hatred for each other runs.Joined by wonderfully boo-hiss support from Burgess Meredith, Joe Spinell and Harry Dean Stanton,Peter Fonda gives a very good performance as Tom Skelton,whose laid-back grin is given a rough under-bite by Fonda,as Skelton finds himself getting caught up in a tough battle.Taking on Fonda, Warren Oates gives the title a striking rogue's charm as Nichol Dance.with Oates making Dance's one- oneupmanship on Skelton a delight to see,as Dance and Skelton fight in the shade.

Brash, eager young turk Peter Fonda, the wayward scion of a wealthy family, comes back to his sleepy Key West, Florida home town and decides to become a river boat fishing guide, which ignites a bitter feud between Fonda and two fiercely independent, self-made working class fellow guides -- cantankerous, ferocious near crazy Warren Oates and his laid-back, but fretful buddy Harry Dean Stanton -- over some choice section of fish-infected water.

An authentically wiggy, amiable, frothy, if somewhat erratic character-based study of the classic rivalry between the bratty, lazy new generation and the crusty, hidebound old guard who automatically feel threatened by any hotshot young competition with an incisive grounding in the rigid parameters separating the hoity-toity, overconfident upper class from scruffy, fidgety blue collar folks, "92 in the Shade" makes for a disarmingly quirky seriocomic delight. Acclaimed novelist Tom McGuane's presentation of the nutty, enrapturing, intriguingly off-beat narrative tends to be pretty clumsy and unsteady, but there's a catchy, idiosyncratic, nicely relaxed rhythm to the eccentric proceedings which neatly ingratiates itself upon the viewer. Moreover, the sharply observed characters are an amusing, enjoyable, entertaining bunch of cranky, obstinate kooks, the dialogue is often riotous ("Take your hat off, will ya? Let your brains cool off -- you're thinking too hard!"), Michael C. Butler's bright, eye-catching cinematography gives the movie an attractive sparkling look, Michael J. Lewis supplies a pleasingly bluesy'n'woozy score, and there are plenty of hilariously wacky moments featured throughout.

The terrific cast includes Margot Kidder as Fonda's flaky, flighty school teacher girlfriend, Burgess Meredith as Fonda's crotchety, foul-mouthed rich grandfather, Elizabeth Ashley as Stanton's pregnant, terminally out to lunch wife (she has this annoying tendency to dress up as a cheerleader and do baton twirls in front of total strangers), William Hickey as Fonda's sickly, gloomy failure of a dad, Sylvia Miles as Meredith's loopy, sardonic secretary, Louise Lathom as Fonda's bored mother, and, in an uncharacteristically goofy role, a surprisingly uproarious Joe Spinell as Ollie Slatt, an insufferably smug and seriously obtuse businessman who professes to be a devout sportsman, but knows positively nothing about fishing. Fonda, Stanton and especially Oates in particular give funny, engaging, top-drawer performances. Although a bit rough around the edges, "92 in the Shade" generally succeeds with its keen depiction of everyday oddballs who are constantly at loggerheads with each other and overall rates as a leisurely paced, wryly humorous one-of-a-kind charmer.

I watched a film based on the book around 10 years ago. It was on a video CD without subtitles. I didn't understand all of it. But I thought it was really charming. I liked the ensemble cast and the amazing background score. I kept postponing reading the book due to sheer laziness but ordered it on Book-finder recently and liked the book as much as I liked the film.

The film is set in the idyllic Key West. Mcguane (who also wrote the book the film is based on) creates these eccentric characters who have no real future. There is Tom Skelton who was a druggie and is now trying to move in on the guiding business of two regular skiff guides. This sets off a potentially murderous rivalry between him and the alcoholic and suicidal Nicol Dance. Carter, another guide plays them against each other even as he struggles with the promiscuity of his ex-cheerleader wife. Skelton's family is also quite dysfunctional with his rich, corrupt and powerful grandfather constantly bullying his bed-ridden father. There is even a character named Myron Moorhen!

I also love the film's idyllic score which makes you want to have a drink. The cast is stellar - Oates, Stanton, Fonda, Kidder, Meredith etc.

A scene that is unforgettable - Fonda following a fish that has bit into the bait of a loud unlikable couple and freeing it. Everything works in that scene - the surroundings and the music.

A dialog from the film that stuck with me: "The captain-or guide-experienced a sudden loss of interest-or ambition-and flaked out without warning"