Comwayon A Disappointing Continuation

Breakinger A Brilliant Conflict

Lidia Draper Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

Payno 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.

micksteel86 I've decided to make the title the main part of my review. Why because this film is written, directed and starring Billy Bob Thornton. It other stars are Robert Duvall, John Hurt, Kevin Bacon Robert Patrick.Frances O'Connor, Ray Stevenson and Katherine LaNasa (who I admit to not knowing). It's a great cast. So why did this film make $15,000 at the box office. Yes that figure is correct.Jayne Mansfield's Car. The title caught my eye of course. Not because it's a great title, just because I had never heard of the film. In fact the title absolutely stinks. But I bought the DVD at the pawn shop for 50 cents because of the great cast.The title could have been The Sons of Jim Caldwell, or The Sons of Naomi Caldwell, but there is a daughter, so maybe THE SIBLINGS OF JIM CALDWELL.Regardless, for many reasons this becomes one of the worst titles of all times , albeit because it's in other ways offensive. I guess set in the deep south there was a desire to make the title as interesting as a Tennessee Williams title. Yes when Vivian Leigh steps off A Streetcar Named Desire to stay with her sister and brother in law, it seems that this has little relationship to the story but it works, it works as in my opinion as the greatest, catchiest title of them all.This film really polarizes people and I've read some of the reviews of those who hate it and all I can say is if you hate it, well you hate it. If a film really stinks I can lose interest after five or ten minutes and most films affect me that way. I almost loved this film. One reviewer mentions that Frances O'Connor goes missing at one point and that occurred to me and my other issue was that Robert Patrick spent so much of the first half of the film in darkness that I didn't recognize him until the second half.So otherwise, I loved it, the slow pace, the darkness to some point, the characters and their development. The acting is first class. Duvall is American Cinema and he and John Hurt are great together. For a film which is set over a week I felt all the loose ends were all tied up. If they wanted a quirky title Old Wrecks and Cadillacs, not Tennessee Williams, but a mighty improvement.

gregeichelberger "Jayne Mansfield's Car" is a tedious, depressing dysfunctional film about a tedious, depressing, dysfunctional pair of families, headed by patriarchs Robert Duvall and John Hurt, respectively.It seems that 30 years before, Kingsley Bedford (Hurt) stole Jim Caldwell's (Duvall) wife, Naomi (Tippi Hedren, whose most famous role was in Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds") and took her to England. Upon her death, and after honoring her request to be buried in her native Alabama, the two groups get together and relive just about every stereotypical situation involving these divergent bodies from sitcoms to equally bad motion pictures.It's also a movie where the title makes no sense whatsoever, except to fool this critic into actually thinking the plot was about the last few days and death of blonde bombshell Jayne Mansfield, who perished in an automobile accident in New Orleans in 1967 (her three children, including "Law & Order: SVU" actress Mariska Hargitay, survived in the back seat).There is a very loose connection with this movie to that death car, but THAT story would have made a much better and much more interesting film than this disjointed, disheveled, direction-less and pointless misadventure which seems to be played at 33 1/3 RPM and was helmed and written by Billy Bob Thornton (who also stars and has efforts like "Sling Blade" and "All the Pretty Horses" to his credit, although one would not deduce that from this travesty).Caldwell's clan consists of backwoods redneck rejects like Navy pilot Skip (Thornton, looking like a cross between Humphrey Bogart and Fred MacMurray with terminal cancer), the idiotic Jimbo (Robert Patrick, "Gangster Squad"), 50-year old hippie Carroll (Kevin Bacon, "X-Men: First Class," sporting either a very bad wig or an even worse haircut) and annoying used car salesmen and son-in-law, Neal Baron (Blue Collar Tour comedian Ron White), as well as a host of nondescript females and grandchildren.On the Brit side, Bedford just brings his upper-class twit son, Phillip, (Ray Stevenson, Firefly in "G.I. Joe: Retaliation"), and slutty daughter, Camilla, (Frances O'Connor, "Little Red Wagon"), along to the Alabama sticks in an effort to reprise the old TV series "Green Acres." When combined, there's enough cracker barrel corn pone dialogue in "Jayne Mansfield's Car" to fill three seasons of "Hee Haw," and forced drama that would make the producers of "Dynasty" and "Knots Landing" cringe.Meanwhile, the families' attempts to mix and interact socially is as awkward as Barack Obama teaching a college course on the history of Syria. And, despite the legitimate anger the Caldwell's feel for the Bedfords, Skip nevertheless comes onto Camilla in a most ridiculous and embarrassing way (making Bill Clinton's advances look like the height of courtly honor; although later she recites the "Charge of the Light Brigade" for him totally naked while he, uh, pleasures himself), Carroll hangs around the world's squarest hippy commune and ogles creepily as his twenty-something girlfriend dances nude in their shack, and Papa Caldwell get his kicks by interfering at the scene of fatal car wrecks (a ludicrous montage shows various examples of these crashes with victims hanging out of windows causing no end to the unintentional hilarity).All the while, Jim's promiscuous daughter, Donna (Katherine LaNasa, "The Campaign"), begins flirting with the ponderous Phillip and we find out that the cold-hearted Jim was somehow a World War I veteran and the peacenik Carroll served in WW II. And, to top everything off, the picture boasts one of the single lamest musical groups ever, despite the fact it was supposed to have taken place in the 1960s.All of these scenes, of course, are meant to show that both clans are Hollyweird types, just quirky enough to be harmless, but nowhere near as clever and intriguing Thornton and co-scribbler Tom Epperson ("Camouflage") hoped they would be.Holding together (albeit loosely) all of these sad plot lines is the wise-beyond-her-pay-grade servant, Dorothy (Irma P. Hall, "My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done"), who fills us all in on the boring back-story. Boring because there is no sympathy, empathy or concern for any of these cretins.Not one iota of interest is generated by these far-out characters so over-the-top and devoid of any real human qualities as to be less than one-dimensional, if that's even conceivable. Then there is a subplot of a black dude who gets drafted, again, a dilemma which causes no emotional response whatsoever, but does illicit this bland response from Carroll: "A kid like Connell has a dream and he doesn't get a chance to live it." Hurt (whom some may remember as the guy whose stomach the monster came of in "Alien") was nominated for a Best Actor Academy Award for "The Elephant Man," Thornton was given a nod for the same prize in "Sling Blade," and Duvall actually won the Oscar for "Tender Mercies," so the acting talent and pedigree is certainly there.Unfortunately, there is nothing any of these people can do with this tepid script, however. Hurt, though, does have the good sense to pass out at the funeral, thereby giving himself (as well as the audience) a reprieve for a while."Jayne Mansfield's Car," which has been left in the film can for more than a year (and certainly smells like it), is enjoying a limited release schedule, but that is only because the producers knew no one would see it with any wider distribution. One would be most prudent and wise to follow their example.

bob_meg I was a bit shocked at how much negative press Billy Bob Thornton's latest effort has received in the mainstream critical media. It's been called racist, homophobic, grating, and stereotypically one-note. Perhaps these reviewers couldn't take the time to appreciate the delicate patina glazed onto the top of this heavy Southern Gothic brew, not only by some stellar star turns, but from Thornton and Tom Epperson's sly, knowing script that bravely refuses to villainize any of the array of characters, no matter how crass or pig-headed their behavior first appears.I have to admit, I was a bit skeptical of Thornton when he first appeared with the break-out "Sling Blade," even though the short it was culled from was anything but slight. I thought he'd be one of these rural "artistes" who falls back on sentimentality and clichéd characters when he didn't have much to say. Jayne Mansfield's Car, however, proves that glib assessment was dead, dead wrong. The strongest aspect of this film is it's script, which does what every extraordinary movie does well: drops you into another place and time that---at first glance, anyway---you'd ordinarily shrug your shoulders and walk away from, then gives you every reason you shouldn't: it's populated with people who are confused, conflicted, and multi-faceted to the point where they don't seem to recognize each other any more, even after living in the same house for decades.The casting is impeccable and Thornton has an incredibly light-touch with all of them. Robert Duvall does what he does best: providing the anchoring figure of Jim Senior with an authority and gravitas that he can express with a lift of an eyebrow. His three sons are wrought over a nice spectrum of angst: Thornton's Skip, the ne'er do well middle son who did everything right but was always a bit too "off" to be dad's shining star. That honor went to Jimbo (Jim Jr., a ferocious Robert Patrick) who played closer to the mold but never saw combat as Skip and Carroll (Kevin Bacon) did, thus considering himself a failure. Skip and Carroll live with scars and resentments from their own tours of duty in WWII and Vietnam, respectively and their anti-war sentiments continue to draw them further from Duvall, in every sense of the word.Even though the crux of the drama revolves around the return of Duvall's wayward recently deceased wife (Tippi Hedren, a pretty darn good corpse), who divorced him for Englishmen John Hurt 15 years before, the canvas of this film is really about the tortured relations between fathers and sons, and the cost of war and death and what it "means to be a man." The War angle is particularly intriguing in that it plays out in the heart of Alabama in the late-sixties, where the malingering odor of Vietnam melts into the residues of a century of warfare, the star of which is the ghost of the Civil War.The culture-clash aspect is amusing and well-played, but not even remotely why you should see the movie. The script ensures you know the characters so well, that all that formulaic hicks-meet-Brits stuff quickly goes by the wayside.Thornton and Epperson's script gives each character a suitable bravura moment and most hit them out of the park, in particular Thornton, in a touching monologue delivered to Frances O'Connor in the forest and Bacon, whose hippie malcontent faces off with Duvall with quiet dignity and aplomb.This is not a film to hang on for forced drama, but it's one you'll have a difficult time turning away from and an even harder time leaving, from the place where you so unceremoniously were dropped.

LeonLouisRicci It's obvious that Director/Writer Billy Bob has a lot on His mind. Transferring those thoughts to the page might prove somewhat difficult. Imaging said thoughts on the Screen is even more of a challenge. Although it is a valiant effort, in the end it renders itself flat but occasionally interesting.There are far too many words in this misfire and a surprising lack of Style. 1969, at the height of very diverse opinions about the Vietnam War and Patriotism that did drive Families apart, would seem to be a fertile field for Thornton to let loose and express. But nothing here seems all that insightful or profound, more like a rambling, soft spoken rant on something about War, Family, Drugs, and Sex.It is not a bad Movie but falls very short from being anything more than a great many great Actors given a load of lethargic points to make and for the most part it all just seems sort of Ho Hum. Not the sort of thing that these deep and touching themes deserve.Jayne Mansfield's car does make a Cameo.