Terms of Endearment

I always think of this movie as a chick flick.  Hard to believe that the guy who help create and write the Simpsons also wrote and directed this movie.  While there is some comedy in the movie it is mostly a tear jerker.  It is also the third family drama to win Best Picture in the past 5 years but at least this one didn't have the mother leaving the father and son like Kramer vs. Kramer and Ordinary People.  Although the movie does portray men as imbeciles and in the end the father gives up custody of the kids. 

The movie is about a relationship between a mother and daughter.  Over the years they have many battles yet they still love each other.  Aurora played by Shirley Maclaine is a little overbearing and is constantly calling Emma  played by Debra Winger.  After Emma gets married to Flap Horton(Jeff Daniels) Aurora tells her that she is making a big mistake.  Even after Emma and Flap move out of Houston to Iowa Aurora still calls multiple times a day.  Emma and Flap start drifting apart and both end up having affairs.  After Emma moves away Aurora starts up a friendship with her astronaut neighbor(Jack Nicholson).  This brings new happiness to Aurora's  life that she hasn't had in a while.  When Emma is diagnosed with cancer the two women become close and the differences they have had become less important.  Aurora and Flap still have their differences and when it becomes clear that Emma will die everyone decided that it is best for Emma and Flap's kids to go live with Aurora. 

While the end is very emotional and the movie takes a different tone after Emma gets diagnosed with cancer I found the movie as a whole to be kind of boring.  Which is odd since I remember liking it the first time I saw it, but this time just didn't do anything for me.  The movie moves very slowly and I found the laughs few and far between.  Shirley Maclaine and Jack Nicholson won Best Actress and Best Supporting Actor.  Shirley Maclaine clearly deserved it as she was very good in the movie but Jack Nicholson who played the retired Astronaut just didn't do much and while the character is memorable I am not sure he deserved the win.  Debra Winger was also great in the movie and she was also nominated for Best Actress but lost to Shirley Maclaine.  While Jeff Daniels was good as Flap he did not get nominated but John Lithgow did as the forgettable Sam they guy who Emma has an affair with.  This was James L. Brooks first movie he wrote and directed after writing and directing for TV.  Known for his comedy this was a very different type of movie for him.  He does have a skill at capturing what feels like real life with it's comedy and heartache which he also shows in his other nominated movie from 1997 As Good as it Gets(which also earned Jack Nicholson an Oscar).  This one just doesn't work for me and I struggled to stay awake all the way through. 

1983 does not seem like it was a great year for movies.  The only other movie I saw that was nominated for Best Picture was The Right Stuff about the early years of the space program.  A good movie but not a great movie either.  The biggest movie in 1983 was Star Wars: The Return of the Jedi which got 4 nominations in technical categories but no major ones.  I love the fact that War Games a teen sci-fi movie got 3 nominations.  Winning best song in 1983 was "Flashdance...What a Feeling" from the now iconic Flashdance.  Scoring no nominations were classics such as Scarface and A Christmas Story.  The big foreign language film from 1983 that managed to sneak into the Best Director and Best Screenplay race was the Swedish film Fanny and Alexander by famed director Ingmar Bergman.  Although I never saw it the movie is considered one of the best movies from that year.  Other movies from 1983 that I never saw that are supposed to be good are Silkwood, The Big Chill and Yentl.