The Age of Commercialism

I'll tell you why so serious

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Otto Preminger followed the remarkable "Bunny Lake is Missing" (1965) with the ridiculous "Hurry Sundown" (1967), a Tennessee Williamsesque drama in which wealthy landowners conspire to scam poor farmers of their land.Elia Kazan directed "Wild River" in 1960, a somewhat sophisticated look at class, race and property in the American South. "Sundown" aims to do something similar, but the result is overblown, condescending and dull. Filled with unnecessary subplots, and marred by a shapeless script, tasteless sexual innuendos and bad casting (actor Michael Caine's American accent is atrocious), the film was based on a novel by K. B. Gilden. This novel was widely ridiculed, but Preminger was determined to turn it into gold. With this aim he hired screenwriter Horton Foote, who'd scripted "To Kill a Mockingbird" some years earlier. No luck. Both Foote and Preminger would later admit to have been dissatisfied with the film's ultimate screenplay."Hurry Sundown" stars Jane Fonda as a wealthy Southern woman and Burgess Meredith as a mean, racist judge. Knowingly melodramatic, both seem to be the only actors in Preminger's production to understand the tone required of such material. Whilst everyone bathes in sanctimony, Fonda and Burgess embrace trash.5/10 – Worth one viewing.

The job of an actor is to find 'THE' moment in his/her material and to stir the audience in either dramatic or comic terms. All the negatives and some positives have already been stated in this column about "Hurry Sundown." However, no one has bothered to really tell about the actress who plays Rose. Her name was Beah Richards, best remembered by some as Sidney Poitier's mother in "Guess Who's Coming To Dinner." Ms. Richards has lingered in my memory since I saw "Hurry Sundown" in the theatre all those years ago. Her performance is monumental here, although, the material, as already stated by many, stunk as skunk! She 'rose' over all the 'stars' in this sorrowful piece to create her memorable portrait. The only reason I'd want to see this film on DVD would be to see her amazing performance once again. Ms. Richards truly found that moment to stir the emotions in an otherwise poorly conceived film.

While I would not agree with Harry Medved that this should have been one of his inclusions in his exceptional book "The Fifty Worst Movies of All Time", it is a bad film...but it's also highly entertaining. Plus, while bad, it just isn't bad enough to make any list of worst films. Now if there was a list of overdone and stupid soap operas, then it WOULD clearly make that list--with nearly enough crazy plot and overacting to put it up there with the best of the worst! The film may have at one point begun with high-minded aspirations. Heck, a film about people triumphing against race prejudice in the 1940s is a good idea. But, unfortunately, somewhere along the way, the film makers lost there way and the end result was a shrill and silly spectacle. Too bad, but the film in no way is in the same league as good race relations films with similar themes like "Pinky" and "Intruder in the Dust"--two fine films that I strongly recommend.Why is the movie so enjoyably bad? Well, much of it has to do with the often cartoon-like characters. The good guys are perfect and noble and the bad guys are like Snidely Whiplash! In particular, you've got to see the snarling and scene-chewing performance by Burgess Meredith--who, I think, kept mixing up this role with the Penguin from "Batman"! That much bellowing and wheezing is like watching a couple of pigs rutting--not a real Southern bigot. Real bigotry is often deceptively nice or at least overtly evil--not funny like his character in the film. It's funny because it was just so badly overdone--like a pot roast cooked for 9 hours! Another hilarious portrayal is George Kennedy as the Sheriff--they don't come much dumber! Now this isn't to say the rest of them were particularly great, though a few performances were decent--Jane Fonda was good and Michael Caine's character was stupid and one-dimensional, but at least I could respect his assuming a somewhat credible Southern accent. They it begs you to think "of all the actors in the world, why pick Michael Caine for the part".Apart from that, if I were to try to describe the film it would be like "Miss Jane Pitman" combined with "Dynasty" combined with "Valley of the Dolls" and "Peyton Place"--it's not a pretty concoction to say the least. Yet, the combination is so bad and hokey and silly that you want stop watching--even if the film is ridiculously overlong and bad. And the ending was, perhaps, the most overdone and awful ones I've seen in some time--as the director apparently lost his mind and just blew everything up! To make things worse, the kid at the end might just be the dumbest child in movie history!! Having all the cast hold hands and sing "We are the World" would have been more believable! By the way, director Otto Preminger has long had a very good reputation. Sure, he made some wonderful films like "Laura" and "Anatomy of a Murder". However, later in his career his output became craptastic--with films like "Bunny Lake is Missing", "Skidoo" and this film--hardly the sort of end to a famous career.

Lousy Otto Preminger film from K. B. Gilden's bestseller (adapted by Thomas C. Ryan and, of all people, Horton Foote!) concerns a greedy white land-owner in Georgia planning to dupe his wife's black guardian and her sharecropper husband out of their real estate, setting off a race war. Everyone is here, from Faye Dunaway to Brady dad Robert Reed, but the script is such a mess--and Preminger is so ham-handed--that nobody survives "Sundown" without looking foolish. Jane Fonda flirts with husband Michael Caine using his saxophone (!) while Beah Richards pantomimes a heart attack as if this were a stage-play. Preminger goes out of his way to make the rich whites despicable and the black folk saintly and reasonable--so much so that the picture might have started its own race war in 1967 (probably the exact type of controversy the director wanted). It certainly gave work to many underemployed, sensational actors like Madeleine Sherwood, Diahann Carroll, Rex Ingram and Jim Backus, but results are laughable. *1/2 from ****