peeedeee-94281 When this movie hit theaters, I was too young to watch it. I was more interested in the latest Star Wars movie. I heard all the praises over the years, but never got around to watching it in my adult years. Then a few years ago, a local movie theater played it, so I got my chance to watch it! And boy what a huge disappointment. Other than the theme tune, I really couldn't find anything to like about this movie. I was expecting something great to come out of James L Brooks, considering he had just done the wonderful show Taxi. But this movie was so depressing! And it didn't have anyone who I could empathize with, because everyone was just horrible. Such selfish motivations, and situations. Debra Winger's character was especially bad. She's a great actress, I just didn't care for the character and her justifications for doing what she did. She was just as selfish as her mother. When I finished watching this movie, it felt like I had seen the worst in women, LOL. All the men in the film seemed to be victims, and the women were jerks. Like James L Brooks was making a movie about mean women. Anyway, I can't see how this film won an Oscar for best picture. Perhaps The Right Stuff should have taken the statue home that year.

capone666 Terms of EndearmentBeing your child's best friend is better than being their parent because you can always ditch them for cooler friends. Mind you, the mother and daughter duo in this dramedy is connected at the hip.Overbearing Aurora (Shirley MacLaine) becomes even more domineering when her husband dies and she's left to raise Emma (Debra Winger) alone. While the pair share a special bound, when Emma's husband (Jeff Daniels) is relocated that bond is strained. To cope with loneliness Aurora courts her neighbour (Jack Nicholson). But when Emma's health takes a dramatic turn she heads home to her mother.James L. Brooks' seminal tearjerker, this Oscar winner based on Larry McMurtry's best-seller was an emotional powerhouse when it was released in 1983. However, overtime its weepy ending and its mother-daughter dynamic have lost some of their initial impact. Incidentally, the one thing that always reunites daughters with mothers is bad husbands. Yellow Lightvidiotreviews.blogspot.ca

mark.waltz When the film version of "Steel Magnolias" came out in 1989, there were plenty of people who must have commented on the similarities of that plot to "Terms of Endearment", especially since Shirley MacLaine, after winning an Oscar for that film, took on a character supporting part with two time Oscar winning Sally Field taking over the role of the long-suffering mom. Fields' M'Lynn is as far from Aurora Greenway as Debra Winger's Emma is from Julia Roberts' Shelby, but indeed, this is a film about the relationship of mothers and daughters that seems quite poignant in light of the recent Carrie Fisher/Debbie Reynolds tragedy. MacLaine's Aurora is really her first middle aged crank, moving from her eccentrics of the 1950's and 60's to what she would perfect as Ouiser Boudreaux. Aurora Greenway is a kinder, gentler version of Ouiser, but she's no wimp and she's probably even more uptight than Ouiser was. It will take a lot of drinks to kill the bug she has, and that comes thanks to the astronaut neighbor who annoys her at first with his drunken carousing but opens her up to a world of middle age sexual awakening when somehow he endears himself to her.That astronaut is Jack Nicholson, played with brassy vigor and well deserving of another Oscar. Certainly, he's fat and disgusting at times, but that's the joy of his character; He knows he's fat and disgusting, but he loves life and isn't stopping for a moment of sobriety and chastity under any circumstance. MacLaine is first seen worrying over baby Emma, assured unsuccessfully by her husband that it hasn't died of crib death, and MacLaine hardly mourns her husband without even a single tear. She tolerates Lisa Hart Carroll as Patsy, Emma's best friend, but can't stand Emma's choice for a husband to be, the handsome but prankish Jeff Daniels who stands up to MacLaine with every nasty remark she dishes out. MacLaine's Aurora is temperamental, but not without heart, and as the film unravels, she becomes a fascinating amalgamation of moods and personality traits. As for Winger, it's a very direct performance, and while MacLaine steals the film right out from under her, it is probably the real off screen animosity between the two that made them better. Dislike of any kind brings out passion, especially in actors, and in fact, they seem more like mother and daughter than Field and Roberts did in "Steel Magnolias". That film was far more colorful and flamboyant with its ensemble cast of family and friends surrounding them, but "Terms" is quite direct. John Lithgow, coming off his flamboyant role as the transgendered ex-football player in "The World According to Garp", is a pillar of quiet strength who helps Winger through some rough times involving Daniels' infidelity as she helps him deal with his own inner storm surrounding his own wife who is unable to have sex.MacLaine is of course best known for the "Give her the shot!" scene when the film takes its soap opera twist at the end, showing the strength that women have when it comes to dealing with family trauma and the undying loyalty they have for their children. It's certainly as poignant as Fields' "I wanna know why!" cry for understanding in "Steel Magnolias", and perhaps the reason Fields did not get the Oscar nomination many (including myself) felt she deserved for that was that the memory of MacLaine in "Terms of Endearment" overshadowed her. This was recently re-written as an Off Broadway play (starring Molly Ringwald!) that in light of the movie's less than stellar cult status seemed unnecessary to be done. I can't get enough of the musical theme by Michael Gore, and indeed, the script and direction by Joseph Brooks is excellent. However, after much thought, I find that "Terms of Endearment" does not hold up as the Best Picture of 1983, although I couldn't imagine anybody else winning an Oscar for Best Actress that year other than Shirley MacLaine.

calvinnme Terms of Endearment is a good exploration of the fact that parents don't often like their children even though they may love them, and children often have a hard time liking their parents when they turn out to be 100% correct - on the long haul - about the people they choose as spouses. Especially when the parents never let the child forget about the mistakes they have made. It also shows that death has a way of rewriting the past - often immediately.Emma falls in love and marries at a young age - about twenty. Her mother, Aurora, apparently married a man who was well off but died young. Aurora is controlling, illustrated in the first scene when she gets up to make sure Emma is breathing when she is an infant. Emma thinks she'll "be happy in a one room shack and she won't look back" when she marries poor young college teacher Flap Horton. And then the babies start coming, and keep on coming. At this point Flap and Emma prove they are quite flappable. Flap cheats because he can, and with a woman who is more like himself, more like the woman he probably would have married had he been older when he made that decision. Emma eventually cheats because she is drowning - in bills, in lack of emotional support, with an oldest son who sees the lack of respect everybody else gives his mother and apes the behavior.Then there is Jack Nicholson's place in all of this. As the aging astronaut who lives next door to Aurora, he is the only one who can get Aurora to fall off her pedestal as high priestess of perfect and emotionally detached decisions, and then she is terribly disappointed and surprised when he bolts as he feels the walls of monogamy closing in on him. Quite frankly, I was surprised that she was surprised that this happened.Some people have told me this is just an awful soap opera, but I disagree. Maybe a little bit because I have an aunt who trod the same tragic path as Emma, and maybe because I am also an exiled Texan who was a bit dismayed at the "lack of wildness in the people" in the state where I would spend the next quarter of a century. But then, I loved this film before any of those things happened.At any rate, highly recommended for the human drama of it all that hasn't really aged in 33 years. The only thing that lets you in on the fact that you are in a different time is Carol King's "It's Too Late" from 1971 playing as Aurora looks out the window at one point.