That was an excellent one.

It's hard to see any effort in the film. There's no comedy to speak of, no real drama and, worst of all.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

"Mr. and Mrs. Bridge," directed by James Ivory, from 1990, is the story of one American family that represents many of that era, showing them in the period of 1937 until just after the war.The Bridge family is upper middle class. Walter and India (Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward) have three children: the aspiring actress Ruth (Kyra Sedgwick, so young you can't believe it); Carolyn (Margaret Welsh), and Douglas (Robert Sean Leonard, another baby face). Walter Bridge is a conservative man, one who can't and doesn't show his feelings, an excellent businessman, by the book, and seen today, very old-fashioned, almost Victorian in his attitudes. He loves and respects his wife. India is a sweet, naive woman who doesn't know much of the world, but is exposed to it through her high-strung, independent-thinking friend (Blythe Danner) and her art classes. India takes her husband's opinions and does what he wants. The few times she puts forth other ideas, she is shot down and accepts what he says.When it comes to their children, both of them are out of it. Walter is a fair man, and when Ruth wants to go to New York, he allows it under certain conditions; when Carolyn wants to marry someone beneath their class, he hears the young man out and gives his blessing; and when Douglas wants to join the Air Force, he counsels his son to stick with his education until he's drafted.This doesn't mean that Walter and India know anything about their children's' private lives or the sex they're having. Walter is far too rigid to consider such a thing, and India is too naive.This is certainly a picture of a different time, where the older generation didn't give their emotions much play, when women went to lunch, took art classes, and everything they did revolved around their husbands, and when the man's word was law. Yet we can see the beginnings of change around the edges in their children's' lives of what's coming.The acting is marvelous, particularly from Paul Newman, who at 65 was still gloriously handsome; and from Blythe Danner, who belonged, perhaps, in a bigger city than Kansas City and among a more liberal crowd. I see where Joanne Woodward's performance has been criticized here; some of it, I gather, was because of her age and also because the character says some things considered out of character as compared to the books on which the film is based. Still, she has the sweetness, the caring, and displays the narrow thought of the character.If the film is slow, it's because of the time period in which the film is set. You sat in the living room in the evening and listened to Nelson Eddy on the radio; you went to see A Star is Born with Janet Gaynor and Frederic March; it was a more leisurely life and a quieter one. Interestingly, it was a time period in which great self-analysis and deep thought could have emerged, but it wouldn't be until after the war that psychiatry (compared to astrology by Walter), women in the workplace, and changes in morality came into vogue.Today we live so differently - it wasn't all it was cracked up to be back then, and life today sure isn't all it's cracked up to be now. A film like this does make one long for just a few of the old ways in terms of lifestyle perhaps - the simplicity, the sense of family, but in its repression and views of women, no way.

This is a series of vignettes in the life of a mid-West family rather than a straight ahead narrative, it is, if you like, Meet Me In St Louis without the songs. The form is still viable as the recent French film The First Day Of The Rest Of Your Life demonstrated last year. Newman and Woodward are, of course, beyond praise, and it's a delight to see Newman, who can epitomise the extrovert, playing a repressed, buttoned-up type in the best English tradition as written by Terence Rattigan. The film takes its own sweet time getting nowhere and has Art House written all over it so much so that it's difficult to imagine it making it through the first reel in the Multiplexes. Apart from the two leads there's fine support from the likes of Blythe Danner, Kyra Sedgwick and Simon Callow and if peering through a microscope at insects busy doing nothing is your thing then you came to the right place.

Having recently read the masterful separate books Mrs. Bridge and Mr. Bridge, by Evan S. Connell, I was anxious to see the 1990 Merchant/Ivory film that combined the two books into one, Mr. & Mrs. Bridge. While not a bad film, it falls far short of the books. Yes, it's a trite thing to state, but it's also true, and there are a number of reasons why the film ultimately fails, especially so if you've read the books before seeing the film. Yet, the film is lushly filmed, impeccably acted, and a very solid production, a cut above typical Hollywood tripe. Paul Newman, as small-minded, stodgy attorney Walter Bridge, far outshines his real life wife Joanne Woodward, who plays his on screen wife India Bridge. It's not that Woodward's Oscar nominated performance is bad, but the adaptation from the books really short shrifts the character. In both of the books India Bridge is seen as a dull, small-minded, repressed, and petty Depression era hausfrau, with intangible longings to 'do something' with her life. The film one dimensionalizes her into a frustrated bohemian eccentric- a slightly loony mom who cannot control her three kids.Overall, the film is far too anomic to retain much viewer interest- even for those fans of slower British PBS fare, and I'd love to see a director skilled at character films, like Steven Soderbergh, who's fond of remakes anyway, take a stab at this material. His 1998 film The Limey, is one of the great character portraits on film, and if he stayed true to the masterful books it would be something to see him do a pair of films based upon the books, that stayed true to what made them so great. Imagine, films based upon books so based on filmic techniques- conundra galore!

Although it was filmed in my home town, the novel written by a friend's uncle, the Bridge home about 6 blocks from mine, it was like watching home movies. Someone else's home movies. It truly had the same effect as embalming fluid would. The only redeeming quality I can think of, is if you live in Kansas City and get a tingle out of seeing some familiar buildings onscreen, this should really send you. It sent me off to sleep.