Clevercell Very disappointing...

Merolliv I really wanted to like this movie. I feel terribly cynical trashing it, and that's why I'm giving it a middling 5. Actually, I'm giving it a 5 because there were some superb performances.

FirstWitch A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

Rosie Searle It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

daoldiges Fonda and this film both look good, she as a haggard, fas been alcoholic, and sunny Los Angeles nicely photographed. Bridges also gives a solid performance in this story that starts off on good fitting but gradually grows thinner as it progresses. The final disappointment is the films weak ending. If you love Fonda and/or Bridges you might still enjoy this film, but for others I wouldn't go out of my way and seek it out.

videorama-759-859391 TMA is definitely for fans who love Jane Fonda, and want to see her strut her stuff, where she's in top form, truly believable as an alcoholic ex actress, displaying a real range of emotions, all done so believably. She's wound up sleeping next to a very much dead guy, a knife sticking out of his belly. For very much of the movie, she's trying to piece together, what happened the night before, as her inebriation has of course, annihilated her memory of the goings on, where we learned she attended a Hollywood party, the night before. This dead body keeps popping up, where someone's obviously trying to frame her. She meets a cop, Turner Kendall (great name played well by Jeff Bridges) that has us very much suspecting him. He's always around where she is, and his car keeps conking out. TMA isn't a good thriller. There's a real weakness throughout the film, as really there's not much plotting, where you don't have to be a genius to see how this film unfolds. Jeff Bridge's other short running pic, the earlier 8 Million Ways To Die had much more going for it. Raul Julia is almost wasted really as Fonda's good friend, with a little bit of menace to his character, a homosexual. He tries to help Fonda a bit, trying to stray the Bridges character away from her. Really, connect the dots. The opening music score, after the bloody start, is kind of a drone but does work with that moment, with Fonda, strolling out into the L.A sun, after taking off from that bloody sight. Bridge's ex cop character is fun to watch, very much cause he's real, He has flaws, and too, is not normally like the tough guy he usually plays. Just compare him here to his character in 8 Million Ways To Die, which hit the screen three months earlier than this. The bloody climax is less than impressive if only for the exaggerated and unreal gore. TMA, despite a good concept, is really is a weak written film that could of been a whole lot better if the writers, weren't hanging about in Lazyville, which like other films, is typically the main fault here, yet it's a real colorfully entertaining film, which we owe greatly to it's topline actors. Too, it's worth the viewing to see a great actress, doing a great acting piece.

donwc1996 This has to be one of the worst films ever made. As I sat through it I kept asking myself why am I watching it? Maybe I wanted to know for sure that it was actually as bad as I thought it was. And it was. I was a big fan of Jeff Bridges but not really for any of his films and certainly not this one - I just always liked him probably because I liked his dad so much. But I actually thought that Jane Fonda's role was absolutely laughable. She was completely unbelievable as was Raul Julia. Casting against type never works and it definitely does not work here. And the fact that Sidney Lumet directed this mish-mash is the biggest shock of all. One wonders how so much talent could be utterly wasted in so much tripe. Actually, the most interesting performance, I thought, was by Diane Salinger who I remember most vividly from the film whereas everyone else sort of washes out. I looked up Salinger and learned that she has an acting academy in Los Angeles which makes perfect sense since she really shines in this catastrophe.

Robert J. Maxwell Jane Fonda is Viveca, a faded actress and major drunk of this or any other generation, who wakes up in bed with a strange man next to her who happens to have a knife sticking out of his chest. She draws a blank. Did she kill him or not? She cleans the guy's apartment of any trace of herself before leaving and gets home by hitching a ride with a retired policeman, Jeff Bridges. She gets drunk again, wakes up in the morning and tries to take a shower but finds the same dead body propped up in the shower stall.Her estranged husband, Raoul Julia, does what he can to help but he's involved with his tony hair dressing business and Fonda winds up turning to Bridges for safety, succor, and sex.Then the plot gets a little twisted.I think Sidney Lumet must have gotten lost during a binge in New York night spots and woke up in Los Angeles. But he gets it just about right. When Fonda first leaves the corpse's apartment she finds herself on an unfamiliar street, the kind that characterizes LA perfectly. The opening sequence shows us blank warehouse walls on empty industrial boulevards and the avenues of pastel, middle-class apartments are equally devoid of pedestrians. That's the difference between LA and New York. In Los Angeles nobody walks. In New York if you step out your door you are mugged by the crowd.Fonda is a professional actress undone by age but the role is played with craggy inconsistency. She's pretty tough. She makes wisecracks to the cadaver while she's scrubbing his apartment. She's aggressive and manipulative at LAX. On the other hand, she plays Viveca as a shrill, nervous wreck with a semiquaver in her voice, even when she's supposed to be mellowed out on Thunderbird, a cheap wine. However, Fonda looks just fine considering that she's no longer the teenager of her earlier movies. She's just my age. I saw a recent photo of her and she still looks stunningly beautiful, as do I.I've always like Raoul Julia's performances. He's reliable, reassuring, good in almost everything he does. Too bad he wasn't around longer. Jeff Bridges usually brings something unique to each of his roles but he's hobbled here by the limitations written into this stereotype of stability. He's a handyman, the eternal fixer-upper, a guy who takes old busted things and refurbishes them, every wife's dream of a man who is good with a wrench and knows how to reintroduce the sputtering home computer to the concept of reliability. He's a man of nature, comfortable enough in his own skin to use ethnic epithets like "beaner" and "spade" good naturedly and without self consciousness, a Mellors the grounds keeper for our time.The script has little hackneyed touches that I find hard to believe originated with such a seasoned and talented director as Sidney Lumet. Fonda is backing out of the dead man's apartment, bumps into someone, there is a sting in the score, and it's merely Jeff Bridges who has followed her without Fonda or the audience knowing it. It's done twice, and it's pretty cheap. And when Fonda changes her hair from phony blond to natural chestnut or burnt sienna or whatever it is, a grand dramatic display is made of it. The viewer is supposed to applaud because, now, THAT'S the iconic Jane Fonda we know and love. No phoniness here. (She smokes and drinks during the first half of the movie, but not the last half.) The score is by Paul Chihara and the main theme is carried by a soprano saxophone. This might have been a novelty in 1986 but now, after ten years of Kenny G, it's enough to induce thyrotoxic storm.On the admirable side, she simply stops drinking for a couple of days and is determined never to get drunk again. We are spared the tears and anguish we might experience if she went through withdrawal -- the bottle looming in the foreground, the trembling hand, the half-full glass poured back into the bottle. Still, I have to say that the ending of Lumet's "Verdict" was more realistic. There, Paul Newman's drunk has found himself at the end but it doesn't stop him from drinking. Also on the good side of the ledger, some snappy lines in the dialog. Viveca's real name is Alexandra Sternbergen. Bridges prefers her real name and so does she -- "In arguments, it's harder to yell 'Alexandra'." It's got a bit of spark.