TrueJoshNight Truly Dreadful Film

FrogGlace In other words,this film is a surreal ride.

Darin One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

Cristal The movie really just wants to entertain people.

pegasus3 Geraldine Page won the Best Actress Oscar in 1986 for her performance in this film as Mrs. Watts, a doddering old lady who seeks to return to her old homestead in Bountiful, Texas amidst the grumblings of her son Ludie (John Heard) and termagant daughter-in-law Jessie Mae (Carlin Glynn). One afternoon, she runs out of their apartment in Houston and gets on a bus where she meets a sympathetic young woman, Thelma, ( Rebecca De Mornay), who provides some solace and support along the way. The film throughout showers the viewer with lots of maudlin pontifications emanating from Page's stagey characterization, one that seemed like a rehash of Faulkner and Tennessee Williams roles she may have been involved in over the years. This film gets a lot of praise, but I found it a sentimental mish mash about aging amidst rose colored memories of the past. Page's performance impressed me as very repetitive and ultimately a bit tiresome, creating a character to whom I found myself engendering little compassion. On the other hand, Heard and De Mornay, I thought, put in quite creditable performances that in many respects outshone Page.

Hitchcoc To summarize this wonderful movie can't do it justice because it is through Geraldine Page's Mama where the whole becomes so much greater than the sum of its parts. Sometimes pain becomes comfort as we watch our days go by. Carrie Watts (Mama) has been in conflict with her daughter for years, but she is dependent on her and their fights never take them anywhere. Now aging, she wants to go back to Bountiful to try to recapture some of her youth. Of course, we have seen the them of "You Can't Go Home Again" played out so many times. But the bleakness of her "paradise" is so gut wrenching, we feel her pain, especially her trip into the old house. Even if we live for only a day, it is a new day with new challenges and excitement. The performance her by Page won an Academy Award and it was so deserved. While this film may make one sad, it's not maudlin or cheap or contrived.

gavin6942 In 1940s Texas, an elderly woman (Geraldine Page) is determined to visit her childhood home for one last time.Geraldine Page (1924-1987) was not as old as she is made out to be in this film, but she plays it well as someone at the end and ready to say farewell one last time. I don't know if she knew it, but she herself was in her final year of life, too... I suspect not, since her death at 62 was from a sudden heart attack. Anyway, this is a well-deserved Oscar, as she is more or less the entire film.I like how simple yet effective this story is. Basically it is a woman returning home to a place that barely still exists. Nothing too strange. But add a few misadventures and stumbling blocks and you have a nice, offbeat story. It captures your attention in its simplicity.

spheckma A Trip to Bountiful is in it's simplicity and superb acting a wonderful, wonderful, gentle trip, both real and metaphorically a beautiful movie. It is a tour de force for Geraldine Page. Her physicality is a thing beyond compare. Rebecca Demoney is also superb in one of her first appearances. Horton Foote has the ability to take a simple situation and make it a marvel of writing and style with a gentle touch, but considering that gentle touch and style so much as conveyed that a person comes away wondering how it was accomplished. You are given not only a feel for the people, but the wonder of the place where it takes place. Bountiful may or may not have been real, but in this story it is and to Carrie it's more real than anything else in her life and more important then anything that she get to see it one last time before her life is over. To reach this end she defies her irritating daughter-in-law who not only bow beat her, but her son; husband to the daughter-in-law. I bought this movie so I could watch the artful performance of Geraldine Page over and over again as every moment of her performance is sheer perfection. When you give an actress as great as her the words of Horton Foote you can't help, but have a magnificent performance.