Lovin' Molly (2005) from Johnny Web (Uncle Scoopy; Greg Wroblewski)

Directed by Sydney Lumet (five Oscar nominations and a lifetime achievement award) from a novel by Larry McMurtry (one win in two Oscar nominations, plus an Emmy nomination and a Pulitzer Prize), Lovin Molly' should have been a slam dunk for a great movie. Lumet was more or less in the prime of his career, one year removed from Dog Day Afternoon. McMurtry was still basking in the glow of the encomiums heaped upon The Last Picture Show.

It wasn't a great movie, although it has some very nice moments. According to IMDb, screenwriter Steven Friedman never wrote another script before or after this one, and McMurtry's sprawling story, spread out over 40 years in the lives of two men who loved the same woman and each other, proved to be difficult for the inexperienced screenwriter to adapt into an economical screenplay. McMurtry's "Leaving Cheyenne" had the advantage of an unlimited expanse of printed pages to develop sub-plots and subtext in a leisurely, thoughtful way, as well as to create some beautiful homespun prose which often moseyed into the territory of simple country poetry. The screenwriter just didn't seem to have the heart to cut anything out, so the individual scenes seem rushed and excessively compacted, and the transitions between scenes seem to be dominated by abrupt jumps forward in time. Unfortunately, chronicling the minutiae of events over four decades didn't leave enough time for the proper development of motivation and character, to such an extent that the movie ends without us ever really knowing much about one of the two men who loved Molly, the one played by Beau Bridges, although we do love him at the end as a colorful and generous-spirited old geezer. Lovin' Molly plays out like one of those Doug Sirk soap opera films from the 50s rather than like a character-oriented 70s piece. If it had been my decision, I would have found a way to minimize or even eliminate the last two acts, particularly given the silly make-up used to age the characters.

The script fails in other ways. The portrayal of Texas rurals seems like the kind of "noble savage" idealization that would be created by someone who had never left Boston. Furthermore, the author chose to replicate the feel of McMurtry's language by simply having it read in narrative voice-over, with each of the three acts narrated by one of the three main characters, following the structure of the book down to the last detail.

The script problems were complicated by the odd casting of Norman Bates as a sane heterosexual from the rural Texas Panhandle. Perkins always manages to seem like a disturbed city boy from New England who is recruited to play a country boy in the school play because the drama teacher thinks it will help him cure his introversion. His love scenes with Blythe Danner were, to understate the case kindly, lacking in electricity. He was supposed to be someone who had trouble expressing affection, but he took it to pathological extremes. Maybe she should have taken a shower to invoke some kind of passion.

I still like Lovin' Molly in some ways. It can get inside you and melt your heart in its best moments, and it's easy to understand why the boys loved Molly, as played with feisty unconventionality by Gwyneth Paltrow's beautiful, curvaceous mother, Blythe Danner, who had some talent to match her looks.

But the damned thing just isn't as good as it should have been.

It's been more than thirty years since this film was made, and it's almost completely forgotten, so I'd love to see somebody else try their hand at McMurtry's "Leaving Cheyenne." I still think there's probably a great movie in there somewhere.