Texasville (1990)

Good sequel to the superb The Last Picture Show, also directed by Peter Bogdanovich, 19 years earlier. Whereas The Last Picture Show dealt with the decline of small-town America, Texasville shows it still exists, but barely. Focuses on the lives of several middle- aged people, mostly the main characters from The Last Picture Show, and how their hopes and dreams have faded and reality is less pleasant.The feeling of nostalgia, of tedium, of lives going nowhere, yet hope within that emptiness, is tangible. Among this drama, there is great humour, however.Superb performances all round. This role was probably the one that turned Jeff Bridges into the downtrodden, bedraggled anti-hero, and launched countless roles for home. Cybill Shepherd is solid as Jacy. Next to Bridges, the star turn belongs to Annie Potts who is simultaneously beautiful, funny, sassy and intelligent as Karla.Ultimately does really make as big an impression as The Last Picture Show, and sort of fizzles out towards the end. The destination is quite tame, but the journey is worth taking.

Director Peter Bogdanovich's failed follow-up to his critical breakthrough film, 1971's "The Last Picture Show", returns to small town Texas to catch up on the lives of those once-compelling characters. Bogdanovich, who--in a replay of the first film--also adapted Larry McMurtry's novel, is now too jaded to see much joy or dramatic irony in these surroundings, and the sterling cast he has assembled just seems disheartened. The plot, a rumination of Jeff Bridges' Duane Jackson (who is now an unhappily married oil-man dissatisfied with his job and life), doesn't built any momentum, emotional, dramatic or otherwise, and the director follows a botched pattern: one flabby, talky sequence after another. * from ****

I have seen this movie. It set a standard from which all crap movies will be measured. I can't sympathize with any of the characters. Everything seems a mishmash, a jumble agonizingly trying to wrestle it free from its asinine plot and hateful tediousness.Jeff Bridges is perfect for this kind of crap. He with that asinine looks and gravity-loving fold around his eyes.I felt relieved for all my transgressions. After watching this movie I think it has been punishment enough to atone for all my sins in the afterlife.Sadly, there is no deserving afterlife for this movie and for all who are responsible for it.

Interesting film, it seems that is a real life where everybody does more or less what he/she wants. Jeff Bridges is a rich man, but near to bankruptcy due to many debts, married to a very nice lady (Annie Potts, whom it would have been much better to keep her than to look at others less beautiful than her)with several sons and daughters, living in a large house where everybody did what he/she wanted and were all somewhat hysteric. Bridges tried to escape and to behave like a bee smelling each flower he finds around, some of them wives of his supposed friends. Suddenly a former classmate of Bridges, the actress Jacy Farrow, arrives in the town and starts looking at Bridges asking him for love and sex. It is difficult to understand how his wife (Annie Potts) accepted all this relationship. She could have been the most smartly developed woman of the world, but to accept his husband playing with another woman candidate, it is only seen in films. The end of the film does not give any solution to the problem, but puts the things how really are in the modern society.