This movie is the proof that the world is becoming a sick and dumb place

n my opinion it was a great movie with some interesting elements, even though having some plot holes and the ending probably was just too messy and crammed together, but still fun to watch and not your casual movie that is similar to all other ones.

Clever and entertaining enough to recommend even to members of the 1%

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

"The Morning After" is a murder mystery that features romance, blackmail and suspense but it's the relationship between the story's two leading characters that provides the main focus of the action and also most of the humour and interest that make this movie so enjoyable to watch. Its opening scene is really intriguing and sets the story up brilliantly. What follows is loosely based on "The Blue Gardenia" (1953) and like its predecessor, this movie features a woman who was with a murder victim on the night he died, awakens the next morning unable to remember what happened and then has to put her trust in someone of whom she's not certain.Alex Sternbergen (Jane Fonda) is an alcoholic ex-actress who wakes up in a strange bed next to the corpse of a man she doesn't know and has no memory of how she got there. She's immediately convinced that the police won't believe her story because she has a history of becoming violent and suffering blackouts after her drinking binges and had even stabbed her first husband with a paring knife during one of her blackouts. In her panic, Alex heads to the airport but can't get out of L.A. because it's the Thanksgiving holiday and all the flights are booked. Feeling desperate and anxious, she gets involved in a car accident and races away from the scene into a nearby parking lot where she meets Turner Kendall (Jeff Bridges).In her efforts to escape the other irate drivers involved in the car accident, Alex gets into Turner's car and together they drive away from her pursuers. Turner's an easy-going, bigoted, ex-cop who says "I like to repair stuff, whatever people are through with" and works mainly on small appliances like toasters. Turner and Alex gradually get to know each other and fall in love. She doesn't know whether or not she was responsible for the dead man's murder and he tries to help her to solve the mystery. The problem is she isn't sure whether or not she can trust him, especially as her estranged husband Joaquin "Jacky" Manero (Raul Julia), who's a very successful hairdresser in Beverly Hills, warns her that Turner is actually trying to frame her. Alex and Turner stick together and eventually discover who the murderer is and also the extent to which blackmail was involved in the crime."The Morning After" makes a strong impression visually with good use being made of interesting locations and a colour palette that uses a range of pastels quite effectively. The scene in which Alex escapes from the apartment where the killing had taken place is particularly memorable because at a time when she's feeling desperate and scared, being situated in a highly lit, deserted-looking street in which she's dwarfed by the structures around her, really emphasises her plight and reinforces the impression that, in these very open surroundings, there really is no hiding place.Jane Fonda and Jeff Bridges are both exceptional in this movie and the chemistry between them is the icing on the cake. Fonda (in an Oscar nominated role) makes Alex's combination of toughness, vulnerability and self-doubt totally believable and Bridges is wonderfully subtle in a performance that creates a lot of distrust about how sincere he is in his concern for Alex's predicament. The dialogue they share is also superb and some of Alex's cutting remarks really sting.There's a great deal to enjoy in "The Morning After" and the whole experience of watching it is extremely entertaining. Its only disappointment, however, is the resolution to the mystery which, unfortunately, isn't up to the standard of everything else that precedes it.

The Morning After opens with an extraordinarily effective scene prototypical of director Sidney Lumet's pared-down building of tension. As Jane Fonda crawls out of bed, we sense her hangover, one of those inordinately miserable mornings when nothing about you is sufficiently functional, and we also sense how accustomed she's become to these mornings as she is not only passably functional but also recognizes herself in the mirror and indeed spills some gin into a glass, speculating about the guy in her bed. Who is he? She doesn't comprehend the true gravity of her predicament until she turns him onto his back. She sees no cop is going to buy her story, so she attempts to remove all the evidence of her stopover. And then she rambles back out, into the intense Los Angeles light. And in a shot from high overhead, she seems like a lab rat, ensnared in some sort of a experiment. It's so well directed that we almost forget how preposterous it is to think this frame-up would ever work. This beginning promises an exceptional thriller. Alas, The Morning After never matches its initial potential, not as a thriller, at least. The narrative has some gaping disparities in it, and thrillers need to be impermeable. This one chalks various elements up to pure coincidence, the ultimate motives are flimsy at best and the fact that the body keeps reappearing like a cartoon or a take-off on The Trouble with Harry brings the movie too close to qualifying as '80s schlock for one to become seriously absorbed in the plot. But The Morning After merits a look anyhow, owing to the characters that it cultivates, and the performances of Fonda and Jeff Bridges in the two leads. She plays an alcoholic actress long past her heyday. He plays an ex-cop who happens to be fixing his car right where she topples into his back seat and implores him to get her away from there, quick. Bridges stays in a petty, manufactured shed, where he repairs appliances. This is all Fonda needs. She's a veteran of the live-fast-die-young subscription, her friends all bartenders and drag queens, her separated husband Raul Julia the most upmarket hairdresser in Beverly Hills. Nevertheless Bridges is reliable and sound, and she could do with a friend. Naturally it's axiomatic that they fall in love. The plot of The Morning After is not nearly as well captured or interesting as the day-by-day grinds of these characters. Actually, I can picture a movie that would omit the murder and just trail the genuine human development between Fonda and Bridges. The thriller filler isn't needed, although given that they used it, couldn't they have made it credible? The entire murder plot gets such slapdash treatment that perhaps I oughtn't have been startled by the big scene in which the killer's exposed. I've seen innumerable revelations in innumerable thrillers, but seldom one as transparent as this one, where the surprises are just announced in an improbable monologue. Indeed, the fact that nearly every opinion I've heard or read of this film seems unanimous in terms of James Hicks' script, including mine, even down to the 'It starts off well but then it gets really forced and jerry-built' gist, it seems pretty clear-cut what makes the film not quite work, though it'd be a misstep to write this movie off simply because the story is so rickety. It's worth making an allowance for due to the performances. Fonda and Bridges are superb in the film, and their rapport, founded on skeletons in the cupboard, bitterness and ulterior motives, gets especially remarkable. They create tangible unspoken feelings together, and they have some dialogue that feels more alive than most starry-eyed chatter in the movies. Before the schmaltzy final scene, not even close to prototypical of Lumet, there's a single shot in which all Bridges and Fonda do is face each other, and we know, and fee, that they want to have sex with each other. It's just energy, and it works wonders. I also admire how Lumet reinforces every color. Living in Los Angeles is part of the debilitating influence on the character played by Jane Fonda. All color is exaggerated: red redder, blue filters, orange hazes. He creates an L.A. comprised of vast flat surfaces of pastels and aggressively sunlit exposed areas. He traps the inebriated Fonda on this landscape like a helplessly insignificant insect sought for squashing by unknown feet, and the imagery makes the whole first hour of the movie much more ominous than it merits. Too bad they couldn't have take steps with the script.

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.

For what it is, MORNING AFTER is good, but could have been great with a sturdier screen play. Interesting premise, but somehow it really doesn't take off. The ending is denouncement is convoluted and not very satisfying. Hard to believe that what happened actually happened! One major error is when Jeff Bridges leaves Jane Fonda off and she goes back into the loft. Bright daylight. When she enters its completely dark out as she closes the drapes. Bad continuity. This is basically a two character movie, maybe three with the Raoul character. Noboby else has anything than a bit. Look close for Kathy Bates before she hit it big. All toll, worth a look, but don't think too hard.