It is always a pleasure to see Julie Kavner have a major role in a film. Her Woody Allen films (HANNAH AND HER SISTERS, 1986, RADIO DAYS, 1987, NEW YORK STORIES, 1989, ALICE, 1990, and SHADOWS AND FOG, 1991) established her as an irresistibly endearing character actress. (I have never seen her in any of the Simpsons productions, as I don't watch them.) So here she is, doing a great job again, and adding a lot to the film. The lead in the film is Nick Nolte. Amazingly, you can understand every word he says. I had forgotten that he was once able to speak. In his later years he has become Chief Mumbler, with a low voice which is semi-audible. He must have listened to some voice coach who told him the fallacious doctrine that the less people can understand of what you are saying, the more intently they will listen to and notice you. So many young actors now do this that it has become a plague. I call it Bubonic Mumbling. And not only can you understand what he is saying, but Nolte does a very good job of acting as well. There is one terrible performance in this film, and it is by the otherwise highly talented Tracey Ullman. Here she overacts and shouts and gets everything wrong, proving that there was no directorial guidance offered to her to calm her down and lower her voice please. But fortunately she only appears in the beginning of the film and then goes off to serve her time in prison, where all people who over-act should go for correction and punishment. Having trashed Ullman, I now praise Joely Richardson. She had a very tough job to do. She had to pretend to be spontaneously and uncontrollably in love with Nick Nolte. OMG! The reason this was unconvincing was not due to any acting deficiency on her part, but because she was simply too beautiful, lively, and delightful, whereas Nolte was a bit dreary to say the very least. So 'boy did she have to struggle', as they say in America, to try to make us believe she could not control her passion every time she set eyes on Nolte. So, full marks to Joely Richardson for forcing us to believe her, against all the evidence of our senses. Another excellent performance in this film, and frankly the leading lady (!), was delivered by the wildly talented child actress Whittni Wright, aged seven, who plays Nolte's daughter. (Wright did one more film the next year and then retired from the screen aged 8. Eleven years later she came back, making two more films in 2006 and 2008, both times uncredited. Whittni, please come back, we need you!) She has the most tremendous acting range, and can go from the most violent screaming brat tantrum to the softest and gentlest lovey dovey cuddly stuff. And what is more, she can flip from one to another in a split second. The story of the film is that Nolte is an unsuccessful struggling AC-TOR whose wife (Ullman) left him with their tiny daughter a few years earlier. Suddenly he is summoned to collect the daughter for a visit with her father, which is not entirely true, as Ullman is in custody of a federal marshal who as soon as the child is removed he handcuffs and takes off to prison for several years. In other words, Nolte is suddenly stuck with this temperamental but very bright daughter whom he barely knows, and of course he has no job and no money. And so we go on from there. The film is very amusing and often harrowing, but I consider it a conspicuous success. It was directed by James L. Brooks, one of the writers for THE SIMPSONS and for Tracey Ullman, hence Ullman and Kavner being in this film. Brooks wrote and directed TERMS OF ENDEARMENT (1983), a huge hit, and other films of note.
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