Kattiera Nana I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

Interesteg What makes it different from others?

2hotFeature one of my absolute favorites!

Breakinger A Brilliant Conflict

drednm The melding of two novels by John Steinbeck, "Cannery Row" and "Sweet Thursday" into one long, boring movie starring Nick Nolte as Doc and Debra Winger as Suzy. Plot follows her arrival in Monterrey and moving in Cannery Row where she becomes a hooker and he lives and collects sea specimens.The original Stenbeck novel took place during the Great Depression while its sequel picked up after World War II. This film jumbles it all together into one unsaid time frame.Nolte and Winger bring nothing to their roles and seem to just walk thru the film, with a few outrightly embarrassing moments such as their attempts to dance to "In the Mood" and the scene where she has moved into an industrial boiler.Also terrible are Sunshine Parker as the Seer and Frank McRae as Hazel, a character clearly borrowed from Steinbeck's own "Of Mice and Men." Neither one of these guys can act. Almost all of the supporting players and extras goon and ham their ways thru their various scenes. They act like cartoon characters.The saving graces of the film are thee supporting players. Audra Lindley is very good as the Fauna the whore house operator, M. Emmet Walsh is good as Mack, and Judy Kerr is fine as the waitress in the beer milkshake scene.While there are some terrific ocean shots along the Monterey peninsula that burst with sun and wind, the rest of the movie is a stagnant mess of lifeless movie sets that depict Cannery Row as a dead zone free of sun and wind. You can almost hear the echoes when the actors speak in the cavernous set.The film is so episodic and disjointed that it requires a droning narration from John Huston to help link the scenes. Then there's the boring "dixeland" style music of Jack Nitzsche that seems to go on forever. The film is a total misfire. With a budget between of about $12M, the filmed grossed around $5M at the box office.Raquel Welch was original cast as Suzy.

billk51 I was at first a little surprised that this film had received such middling reviews and was not a box-office success. I had loved it when I first saw it in the 80s on some pay TV channel and thought that Nolte and Winger were a terrific couple. (My discovery that Rachel Welch was originally cast in Winger's role was completely unfathomable.) After seeing the film I read the Steinbeck novels on which it was based: Cannery Row and the sequel Sweet Thursday. I also loved the novels and thought that the film was generally faithful to them.But I soon realized that I was a lover of sentimental films, and that this was a sentimental film. Skid rows are not full of the lovable and eccentric characters that inhabit Cannery Row. But if you are also a lover of sentimental films, and especially if you are a fan of one of the stars, by all means see the film. You may be enormously pleased.

mungfish Having read Steinbeck's Cannery Row and Sweet Thursday, I am appalled that this travesty was allowed to be filmed. Except for a few character names and a few familiar scenes, the movie was unwatchable. The movie dragged on and the invented dialog was painful to listen to. The screenwriter should be ashamed for defiling the original books to the extent that he did. I understand that most books or novels cannot be set to a movie directly, but this effort missed the intent and charm of the originals. The photography was fairly good and some of the set designs were creative. Although Debra Winger was miscast, she probably was a better choice than Raquel Welsh. How did the Chinese grocer become Mexican? I sincerely wish that someone would remake the movie and be true to Steinbeck's genius. This debacle insulted his memory.

rmagier Have not seen the movie in many years, but recall vividly the mood it created, particularly through the narrative provided by John Huston. Incidentally, for those of you who are curious and experimental, beer milkshakes don't really have a great deal of flavor, but like this movie, can be greatly enhanced through the addition of liberal amounts of blackberry brandy. Though not a parody, I am reminded of someone's observation that great parody must embody a true respect for the original. This movie can be easily criticized on many levels, but the admiration for the material seems fairly genuine, even if it does not always find the mark.