the leading man is my tpye

Fantastic!

Very interesting film. Was caught on the premise when seeing the trailer but unsure as to what the outcome would be for the showing. As it turns out, it was a very good film.

As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

I'm too much of a classic movie buff for my own good. I just can't accept a movie that starts with Paul Newman asking a woman to run away to Hawaii with him, she laughs him off, and he ends his speech with a dejected, depressed, "Hang in there," before ending the scene.In Nobody's Fool, Paul Newman plays a limping old-timer who drinks and plays cards with his friends, and hits on his buddy's wife. If someone else was cast in the lead, maybe I could have seen it with a more open mind, but when Jessica Tandy scolds heartthrob Paul Newman for not walking fast enough, it just breaks my heart. If you don't feel the same way about him, you can try to get through it, but it's still not very good. It very clearly came from the 90s, which in this case isn't a good thing. The irredeemable scoundrel friend, the harmless flirting, the unrealistic quips between father and son, the gratuitous Melanie Griffiths nude scene, the no-good, over-the-hill guy who changes his ways for no good reason. . . See what I mean?

Robert Benton's Nobody's Fool is more than a pretty good film it is a good film, the movie tells the story about a character named Donald Sully a man who is at a rascally ne'er do well retirement age.. While he is pressing a worker's compensation for a bad knee, and secretly works for his nemesis Carl Roebuck, and flirts with his young wife Toby. Sully's long forgotten son and his family have moved back to town for not only for thanksgiving dinner but for Sully's son to spend time with him and so that his father can meet his children. The movie stars Paul Newman as Donald Sully who gets to see his long forgotten family but when he first sees them when he hasn't seen them in a long time. Gets anxiety about unfamiliar family responsibilities. This movie compares to The Descendants by Alexander Payne but in which both of those 2 films have two things in common, more drama than comedy, and one funny part in both. Director Robert Benton copies the directorial style of Alexander Payne with his direction for the movie. The movie also stars Jessica Tandy (who gives an overrated performance.), Bruce Willis ( as Sully's nemesis.), Melanie Griffith (as Roebuck's wife), and Phillip Seymour Hoffman as a police officer in the film. Based on a novel by Richard Russo this was a complete enjoyment for me.

A dissenting view—I enjoyed "Nobody's Fool" when it came out and thought I'd take another look when it turned up on streaming Netflix. Maybe it's too slight to stand up to a second viewing; despite an outstanding cast and the familiar-looking Rustbelt locations, on the small screen the storyline comes across as listless, contrived and sentimental. At this stage, Newman just seems too serene, too much of a living Buddha, to be playing a hand-to-mouth working class scrounger like Sully. Jessica Tandy is the only cast member who really seems to inhabit her character and breathes some life into the scenes she's in; by comparison, everybody else is just doing shtick of one kind or another. The out-and-out slapstick stuff—not one but two of Bruce Willis's skanky "secretaries" end up losing their clothes at a poker game—and a Capraesque subplot about a real-estate deal gone bad certainly don't contribute much. Philip Seymour Hoffman (!זיכרו לברכה) completists should be aware that he turns up briefly as a sorehead small-town cop. Newman and Richard Russo fans will surely enjoy; others should approach with reduced expectations. Just read up above that w/d Benton wanted Nick Nolte and Kim Basinger to play the Roebucks and Jeff Bridges to play Sully's son—that might've made a difference.

Nobody's Fool (1994)A stunning mix of moving, touching performances and dialog with some awkward directing and editing. The movie feels a bit cheap or sloppy, even, and yet there are moments when it shines and when you feel its depth and it's potential.And then there is Paul Newman. He's the lead throughout, the title character no doubt, and he gives an utterly convincing, nuanced, unflinching portrayal of a tough old guy in a small town. He isn't quite the lovable one that everyone loves despite his flaws--that would be too much of a cliché, and the movie avoids at least that one big cliché perfectly. With Newman's help. He's a bit too gruff and makes too many truly hurtful decisions to automatically make him a diamond in the rough, a sweetie with a leather exterior. But the viewer can see soon enough how genuine he is, thoroughly thoroughly genuine. He doesn't coddle, he doesn't waffle. He knows what he's about. And he really is admirable for steadily getting small things done for the good of others, though you can hardly tell sometimes. The fact that he ignores common decency (like driving his pickup truck on the sidewalk) is not quite charming, but it adds to his honesty, ironically.The rest of the cast sounds impressive but doesn't have nearly as much to do, not with any depth, though with sincerity in the performances. Bruce Willis has a role that constrains him more than you'd think, as a younger building contractor who is a bit of a rake. Jessica Tandy is a sharp, lovable older woman who rents to her upstairs to Newman. Melanie Griffith has a small role and is charming in her distinctive way, and we even see, briefly, Philip Seymour Hoffman in an unlikely role as the local cop.The director (and screenwriter) is Robert Benton, who is best known (to me) as the director (and writer) for "Kramer vs. Kramer." I'm guessing it was because of that, and the kind of interpersonal story at stake, the allowed him to gather such an impressive cast. It would be a wild guess to understand why it doesn't quite work--my first inkling is merely that he was screen writing about someone else's original story and it was something he didn't know about first hand. Some of the lines are off, some of the humor gets silly, and in one or two cases you just want to say, no way.Even with the elevating humor to the tale you expect it to maintain its realism which it mostly does. It's set in the mid-Hudson Valley, where I've lived for 30 years, and there were lots of familiar places. They got the feel of the little towns slightly down on their luck really nicely, and the damp cold of winter adds to the overall ambiance. (There are directing quirks here, too, like never plowing the streets, and anyone who lives in an area with snow knows that the main streets, and even the smaller ones, get plowed often and well. But hey, it looks good, all that white.)What's to take away from this? A beautiful sense of integrity. The father-son dynamics are too forced to work, the seeming true friendships that exists or not between some characters isn't always fleshed out, and the weird relationship between Newman and Willis is crude and off-kilter. It's not a great film on many terms. But the development of Newman as a persona, as a type of person, is amazing. And he's amazing. Enough to see the movie just for his contribution.