TERMS OF ENDEARMENT (1983) (A) - With quality from top to bottom -- including writer-director and cast -- it's hard not to fall again for this shaggy-dog story of a woman and her mother both searching for ways to be happy, with or without men. Debra Winger, following up "Urban Cowboy" and "An Officer and a Gentleman," stakes her claim as poster child for the early-'80s zeitgeist with her sweeping portrayal of an ordinary Texas woman trying to raise a family with a philandering academic husband.
A very young Jeff Daniels is endearing as her hound-dog of a husband, who philanders with her students as he climbs the ladder through small-time academia. He and Winger are a powerful combination, though they toil in the shadows of a pair of heavyweights -- Shirley MacLaine as Winger's uptight mother and Jack Nicholson as MacLaine's neighbor, a portly former astronaut whose reputation still reels in the young groupies.
James L. Brooks ("Broadcast News") directs and writes the slyly effective script based on the novel by Larry McMurtry ("Lonesome Dove," "The Last Picture Show"). The story is granular and the characters are richly developed. Winger's Emma is a dreamer and a striver, but she is chained at home with three kids while Daniels' Flap plays professor. Emma finds a loving adulterous relationship of her own with a kindly man she meets in a grocery store (John Lithgow, the essential fifth man here).
It's no secret that Emma eventually gets sick, and the story gets messy, veering off into territory that sets it light-years beyond your typical TV weeper of the week. Emma's relationship with her two boys is particularly nuanced and heartfelt. Meantime, MacLaine and Nicholson engage in a mature pas-de-deux, with one-liners flying by faster than you can keep track of them. At their first meal out together he tells her she needs a lot of drinks. "To break the ice?" she asks. "To kill the bug you have up your ass," he replies with a grin.
At two hours, 12 minutes, and covering a decade or so, this has the sweep of an epic. Like "The World According to Garp," it represents peak '80s melodrama mixed with droll comedy.
LEAN ON ME (1989) (B) - This one doesn't wear as well, slicked all over by the 1980s. Morgan Freeman fashions a star turn in the based-on-true-story of Joe Clark, who, Kotter-like, returns to an inner-city New Jersey high school in turmoil and transforms it into a model educational system.
What put a lump in our throats 30 years ago now lands a little lower, in the pit of the stomach. Whereas Brooks' movies were fresh and innovative, "Lean on Me" -- from "Rocky" director John Avildsen -- is strictly by-the-numbers and downright cheesy at times. Freeman carries everything on his shoulders and lifts it above the humdrum, with passion and a sharp tongue. But writer Michael Schiffer ("Crimson Tide," "Colors") has trite tendencies when it comes to storytelling. And Avildsen's old "Rocky" pal Bill Conti shoehorns his soundtrack noodlings in with contemporary pop music, like rap songs and hard-edged fare like Guns N' Roses' "Welcome to the Jungle."
The zippy transformation of the high school from the aforementioned jungle (look for "Sopranos" regular Michael Imperioli as a hood in the opening scenes) to a pristine, high-functioning citadel of learning beggars belief, but just roll with it. The bad guys -- a vindictive parent, a craven mayor -- are cartoonish, but just enjoy the moment they are forced by Clark to eat crow. The kids are wide-eyed and chubby-cheeked -- just cheer them on to succeed, as you know they will.
I was more of a sucker for this shtick back in the day. Maybe I'm just jaded now. Freeman is worth the price of admission, as intent as his character is to make this project succeed, by sheer force of will.
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