Frank Carr Fool for Love is one of the best films, and plays, I've seen in my 30+ years of adulthood--and I hate *everything* (i.e., I have very high standards). I also hate 90% of what Robert Altman has directed; Nashville goes right in the garbage can as far as I'm concerned.No spoiler here--just go to the play, if you can, or watch the film. It is intense, suspenseful, moving, funny (occasionally)...a must-see for art-film enthusiasts. Sam Shepard is a brilliant playwright and an excellent actor. The casting of Kim Basinger, Harry Dean Stanton, and Dennis Quaid for the movie was nothing short of genius.

runamokprods Interesting, laid back version of the Shepherd play. On stage, with Ed Harris in the lead, it was all frenetic energy and danger. Here the piece is more moody and dreamlike. At times that works tremendously well, and it is visually beautiful. The play has been opened up in a way that feels natural and not forced. And the use of narration is very interesting and productively unsettling, since the memories we see do not quite match the words we hear. On the other hand, the slower pace makes the writing feel more melodramatic and almost old- fashioned in its twists. And Shepherd is nowhere near as interesting as Harris was on stage. We never feel that he is really dangerous. He comes off more as a love-struck kid than obsessed man. And it ends with a whimper, not a kick. Still, there are plenty of less interesting theater to film adaptations out there.

evanston_dad "Fool for Love" is one of the several now forgotten films Robert Altman directed throughout the 1980s. This one, a screen adaptation of a Sam Shepard play that features Shepard in the lead role, just simply isn't very good. Altman made many not-very-good films over the course of his fascinating career, and many times the fault was his. But here I think the fault lies with Shepard for writing such a flimsy play. Altman's direction is assured, the performances are o.k. given what the actors have to work with, but this inconsequential screenplay goes nowhere, and takes its time getting there.Shepard is Eddie, a stuntman who has a love/hate relationship with May (Kim Basinger). The two fight endlessly over the course of an evening spent in some dusty motel in the middle of nowhere, while a mysterious man (Harry Dean Stanton) who may be either a figurative or literal father to both Eddie and May quietly observes. Randy Quaid rounds out the four-person cast as a gentleman caller.The only dramatic hook in the entire plot is the suggestion that Eddie's and May's relationship is incestuous. However, this hook feels more like a gimmick than anything. The screenplay doesn't explore their relationship in any detail, and it doesn't use their relationship to explore any more universal themes. Shepard and Basigner create eccentric, mannered characters who grow irritating within the first five minutes; Stanton and Quaid have little to do but provide reaction shots. The last half hour or so of the film is especially bad, when Eddie's and May's back stories begin to play out in flashback over monotone, somnolent voice over.Chalk this up to another of Altman's experiments gone awry.Grade: C-

craigbaker The film seems to beg for a less literally interpreted comment than those posted here (Where I looked hoping to find someone who could explain the darn thing).Usually when people methodically destroy a motel, or start SHOOTING GUNS, the manager comes out and asks them to stop. For some reason that never happens in this movie. Hmm.It seemed to me that The Old Man and the Old Trailer in the Old Junkyard are the only real things in the story, and The Old Motel with its' crackling neon lights, complete lack of window coverings, and grotesquely stained mattresses a symbolic tableau for his daily reliving of past events in his life and possible present day scenarios. Ghosts from the past appear and wander hazily around the courtyard, even interacting with each other while the old man looks on and listens with varying degrees of emotion, amusement and curiosity, interrupted periodically by his desire for alcohol which plays a large part in the imagined world he inhabits - a world where he is "married to Barbara Mandrel".The characters suddenly depart as the whole scene bursts into allegorical flames, and the Old Man retreats defeated again to his Old Trailer amid the conflagration. Presumably the nightmare will be repeated on the morrow, like so many Twilight Zone episodes which this movie so closely resembles except with better dialog.CB