Full Moon in Blue Water (1988)

Gene Hackman plays a middle aged bar owner, whose wives gone missing and is presumed dead.But he refuses to accept that,so he lays in bed all day, ignoring the world around him.While watching old home movies of him and he's wife. I guess they want you to feel sorry for him,laying there while everything fall to pieces around him. But I just found him pathetic.He let down the people around him, while he lays in bed feeling sorry for himself. There are some subplots about a bridge getting built.But they never really explore that. The sad part is,that could have made the movie more interesting. But alas no,they continue with the boring gene hackman feeling sorry for him self story

A wonderful little movie that got overlooked in the distribution mill at the time of its release, "Full Moon in Blue Water" is overdue for rediscovery. It has so many parallels to "Moonstruck" that one could mistakenly peg it as a copycat, but guess again: "Full Moon" was completed before "Moonstruck" was ready for previews; the similarities are merely coincidental; and there's no need to choose between the two, when both films are so easy to love. Gene Hackman leads as Floyd, the owner of a rambling, cozy restaurant-shack on the Gulf Coast of Alabama: he's a man emotionally stalled by the disappearance of his beloved wife. She disappeared while swimming and everyone presumes her dead, but Floyd can't accept this; he believes she was drawn away by an undertow and struck her head: that she's wandering now with amnesia but someday will return to him. Business is dwindling at the shack, but he refuses all offers to buy him out: he's keeping the place for Dorothy to come home to. In the meantime Louise (Teri Garr) keeps him company, and wants more, a real commitment from him - her frustration is touching and funny. She can argue down all of his high-flown romantic notions, and his practical objections too, but when he remembers his loss he grows wistful and drifts away where she can't reach him. Their sad-tinged love affair is played out with screwball logic. It's Jimmy (Elias Koteas), a mildly retarded young man who sweeps up around the shack and cares for Floyd's in-and-out senile father (Burgess Meredith), who twists the screw to its tightest, by doing something so ghastly - something that would be absurdly funny if it weren't too appalling for laughter - and then tops even that by springing the worst possible plan to resolve matters, at the worst possible moment. "Full Moon in Blue Water" takes a kidding approach to the "magic" of romance, but on some level believes in it too; that it's able to keep both attitudes in play at the same time may be the best of what it shares with "Moonstruck." Its special distinctions are worth discovering.

Full Moon In Blue Water is not a film that gets mentioned much in the filmography of Gene Hackman (nor Teri Garr and Burgess Meredith for that matter). This forgotten and forgettable drama is very much a character piece, the kind of slow-burning story that actors love to be involved in but audiences more often than not find tedious. In this one, all the main actors seem to be very much "into" their roles but the viewer doesn't really get the chance to feel quite so absorbed and involved in the story or the characters.Ex-merchant marine Floyd (Gene Hackman) owns a restaurant in coastal Texas called the Blue Water Grill. About a year before the story begins, Floyd's wife Dorothy (Becky Ann Baker) goes missing out in the bay and is presumed dead. But without a corpse to give him the sense of closure he so desperately craves Floyd spends his days pining for her, clinging to old home movies and photographs in the forlorn hope that she may return. As the weeks drift by, his life and his business begin to collapse around him but he is so wrapped up in depression and fading memories that he barely notices. Worse still is the way that Floyd distances himself from three people in his life who genuinely need him. First there's simple-minded odd-job man Jimmy (Elias Koteas) who does occasional repair work around the restaurant. Then there's the senile old father-in-law The General (Burgess Meredith), a crusty invalid who needs constant supervision and company. Thirdly, there's local gal Louise (Teri Garr) who would willingly be Floyd's new love if she could just get him to let go of the unhealthy obsession he has with his missing wife. Louise also knows that a local property developer is about to make a ridiculously cheap bid for Floyd's restaurant, and that in his state of melancholy he might just give away everything for which he has worked for a fraction of its value.Meredith gives the most memorable performance in the film, etching a funny but believable portrayal as the demented old-timer. Hackman is solid too, although crucially his character too often acts in a manner that lacks credibility. Earlier reviewers have noted that there is something false about the way he allows things to fall apart. Could he really be so besotted with the memory of a lost wife that he would let a business they set up together go to ruin? With her father still alive and dependant upon him for care and companionship, would he really act so distant? And with a beautiful woman like Garr literally offering herself on a plate, wouldn't he at the very least give this new relationship a go? For me, these are the flaws in character development that make Full Moon In Blue Water less engrossing than it should be. It's great to see films that are prepared to do away with action and special effects and high melodrama, but when a film is as character-driven as this one it needs characters that are credible and identifiable. Full Moon In Blue Water comes unstuck because on the one hand we can all relate to Floyd's predicament but on the other it's almost impossible to relate to his self-indulgent reaction to it. A watchable movie, then, but not really as fulfilling as it might have been.

Lately I've been on a Gene Hackman 1980's kick. Hoosiers, many folks think is the best portrayal of a sports coach, maybe the best sports film ever made. Twice in a Lifetime is a middle-aged love story of betrayal in a blue-collar family and it ranks up there as the best of Hackman's work. Then there is a less successful film, Full Moon in Blue Water.No one in the movies in the last thirty years portrays the middle-age everyman, the tough, and hard working, Joe like Hackman. He's certainly not a romantic idol, but he is manly enough to woe Ann Margaret in Once in a Lifetime and Teri Garr in Water. In addition, Garr is very good as a faded honky-tonk town girl with widower, Hackman in her sights. The trouble, Hack is still in love with his missing spouse. He spends most of his days watching old home movies of the lost wife while his saloon business goes to pieces. Also, he must deal with a stroke victim, the father-in-law, Burgesss Meredith, the quintessential old coot.Somehow the viewer will not believe that a capable character like Hack would let a business go to sleazy Real Estate snakes without a bar brawl. The idea that Hack would moon about the ex for a year while busty Garr is all over him; well, it doesn't add up.