The Good Wife

Tuna's comments in white

The Good Wife (1987) is a character-driven drama that takes place in a small town in 1939 Australia.

Rachel Ward is married to a lumber worker. The two of them live way out of town, and her husbands kid brother is always around. Rachel feels noting exciting ever happens in her life, or ever will happen to her. Even when her brother-in-law moves in with them, and her husband allows them to have sex, things are no better. Then she meets a dashing new barman, and becomes obsessed. Her husband doesn't want to lose her, but also does not want to do anything that will make her hate him, and tries to deal with her obsession as best he can, even when she becomes the focus of town gossip.

The film is beautifully photographed, well acted, and is full of interesting characters. It won for best costumes, and was nominated for several technical and acting awards at the Australian Film Institute

NUDITY REPORT

Rachel never shows her body parts, but looked good in her sexy outfits.

Susan Lyons shows her breasts briefly, but in good light, near the end of the film. You need to watch both the Widescreen and 4/3 versions to see the exposure.

DVD info from Amazon.

Widescreen anamorphic, 1.85:1
no meaningful features

Scoop's comments in yellow:

Definitely not my kind of movie.

1. Moves at a snail's pace

2. Is well-intentioned, but boring.

3. Includes completely unrealistic behavior because it is necessary to the plot.

Sam Neill plays an itinerant bartender who arrives in a small roughneck town and makes an almost violent pass at Rachel Ward within a minute of his arrival. It so happens that Ward and her husband are not the type of people who will have him beaten to a pulp, but he didn't know that when he hit on her, did he? When she refuses he says something like "tough luck, sweetheart, it's the only chance you'll ever get with me." And he wasn't kidding either. At the very end of the movie, when Neill is run out of town and Ward tries to follow him, he throws her off the train.

On the other hand, the photography is lush, and the setting is the prettiest picture postcard small town you'll ever see.

The Critics Vote

General consensus: two stars. Ebert 1.5/4, Maltin 2.5/4

Rotten Tomatoes summary. Three articles on file

The People Vote ...

With their votes ... IMDB summary: IMDb voters score it 5.6

With their dollars ... it grossed only one million dollars in the USA

IMDb guideline: 7.5 usually indicates a level of excellence, about like three and a half stars from the critics. 6.0 usually indicates lukewarm watchability, about like two and a half stars from the critics. The fives are generally not worthwhile unless they are really your kind of material, about like two stars from the critics. Films under five are generally awful even if you like that kind of film, equivalent to about one and a half stars from the critics or less, depending on just how far below five the rating is.

My own guideline: A means the movie is so good it will appeal to you even if you hate the genre. B means the movie is not good enough to win you over if you hate the genre, but is good enough to do so if you have an open mind about this type of film. C means it will only appeal to genre addicts, and has no crossover appeal. D means you'll hate it even if you like the genre. E means that you'll hate it even if you love the genre. F means that the film is not only unappealing across-the-board, but technically inept as well.

Based on this description, this film is a C-. I liked it somewhat more than most, mostly for the characterizations.