User Reviews

I'll confess that I rented this because it was filmed in Beaumont, Texas, where Mrs. Bear and I met during college. My great uncle who I was named for lived there for many years in a house within a brisk walk of one of the film's locations, the Pig Stand restaurant (since closed) on Calder Avenue. Mrs. Bear and our cubs have eaten there many a time and it was a treat to see it on screen.

Writer/star Wendy English grew up in Beaumont and moved to Los Angeles to get into the film business, so this probably is autobiographical. It tells of a girl named Jude who lives with her mother and grandparents. Jude has attended college for a long time and has a collection of degrees: this is how she avoids actually getting on with the business of life.

As the story opens she's in her cap and gown, and swears that this is her last graduation. She's doing nothing with her life, though. She hangs out at a picturesque movie theater with her friend Riley, whose family has been in the theater business for generations. A new multiplex is about to open, which will spell doom for the Jefferson Theater (a grand old movie palace in downtown Beaumont that has been lovingly restored to its former glory).

Riley would like to go to California since he and Jude dream of being successful sitcom writers. But he is reluctant to leave because his father has worked to hard to keep the theater going.

The dominant theme here is change. Characters simultaneously desire and fear change, and that conflict is what fuels the story. Jude says, People truly petrified of change, they won't budge. Not until they become more afraid of things staying the same. And that's where I was." Change is a constant in life. People die, people move away, new people come into your lives, old businesses close, new business open.

In a pointless subplot that almost grinds the story to a plot, local citizens protest against the multiplex. And this is the one big flaw in English's screenplay. Beaumont is a city with a population over 100,000. The film takes place in modern times, but the town is presented as quaint and bucolic. It's as if Andy Griffith's Mayberry had somehow sprouted chemical plants and a university but kept it's population around 2000 people. This subplot fizzles away, and isn't missed.

The multiplex is a symbol of change. True and valid. But casting it as so dramatic a moral issue would have been valid had the film been set fifty years ago, but in modern times just seems peculiar. When a local preacher rails against the multiplex you can just give thanks that he has the decency to do so on the steps of the church rather than from the pulpit.

Jude's grandfather dies. This leaves the three women to sit and contemplate their lot in life while bickering with each other. Jude's mother fancies herself to be a fragile southern belle; in actuality, she's a hypochondriac whose main activity is going to doctors for imaginary ailments. As nothing physical is ever found, she declares that she suffers from mental illness and gets prescriptions for meds which she never takes, then complains that they don't work.

The family's financial situation is kind of shadowy. Nobody works. Jude goes to college year after year. The lights are on, there's gas in the car and they eat three square meals a day. The mother's recreation in life is going from doctor's office to pharmacy. But when the grandmother is in the hospital suffering with cancer, relatives suddenly appear and threaten to sell the house out from under the three women.

This ill conceived subplot is wisely left to die by the side of the road, and could have been eliminated easily. It has the effect of Lillian Hellman having rewritten one scene from a William Inge play and then moving on in search of fresh prey.

Jude's boyfriend gets a promotion at the chemical plant and proposes marriage. This presents the dilemma: marry him and stay in Beaumont like her cousin has and obsess with housekeeping and child rearing, or head out of town.

It's refreshing to see a film about working class people that doesn't present them as exotic creatures or morons. These characters are the kind of people Bruce Springsteen writes songs about.

And it's refreshing to see a zero budget movie that's not a variation on SAW or HOSTEL.

The actors are uniformly excellent. Their speech patterns, though, might strike people in New York or Los Angeles as strange. Ms. English cast local actors from Southeast Texas. If you're unfamiliar with this speech pattern they might sound flat and not sufficiently dramatic.

Sadly, the writer/lead actress and director haven't gotten second films. That's a pity. They deserve another shot at fame and fortune. Here's wishing them the very best, because they deserve it.