moonspinner55
Dreadful. Any film that contains a sequence (usually 'poignant') of a character (typically a middle-aged man) watching home movies of happier days is a picture that shamelessly courts clichés. "Full Moon in Bright Water" begins with such a scene--before we even know who the characters are or what the circumstance is (I was more curious who was shooting the home movies while Gene Hackman and his wife frolic on the lake). Widower Hackman, grieving his wife's not-recent death by drowning, runs a tired old lakefront bar on the Texas coast; the county commissioner is trying to frighten him into selling the property for the prime real estate value (Hackman doesn't know he's sitting on a goldmine--the script is that stupid). Director Peter Masterson keeps the nitwit story rolling along, but somewhere late in the second reel I felt he and the cast had nothing more to offer. Elias Koteas as a not-too-bright bar-employee nearly shows up the heavyweight stars (Hackman, Teri Garr and Burgess Meredith), but his role is made impossible by a ridiculous turn of events. The action is kept very busy, yet the characters never take shape and some of the dialogue is really ugly. Garr made a lot of bad film choices after her Oscar-nominated turn in "Tootsie", but what drew Hackman to such a thin, innocuous project? *1/2 from ****
Eddie_weinbauer
Gene Hackman plays a middle aged bar owner, whose wives gone missing and is presumed dead.But he refuses to accept that,so he lays in bed all day, ignoring the world around him.While watching old home movies of him and he's wife. I guess they want you to feel sorry for him,laying there while everything fall to pieces around him. But I just found him pathetic.He let down the people around him, while he lays in bed feeling sorry for himself. There are some subplots about a bridge getting built.But they never really explore that. The sad part is,that could have made the movie more interesting. But alas no,they continue with the boring gene hackman feeling sorry for him self story
Baceseras
A wonderful little movie that got overlooked in the distribution mill at the time of its release, "Full Moon in Blue Water" is overdue for rediscovery. It has so many parallels to "Moonstruck" that one could mistakenly peg it as a copycat, but guess again: "Full Moon" was completed before "Moonstruck" was ready for previews; the similarities are merely coincidental; and there's no need to choose between the two, when both films are so easy to love. Gene Hackman leads as Floyd, the owner of a rambling, cozy restaurant-shack on the Gulf Coast of Alabama: he's a man emotionally stalled by the disappearance of his beloved wife. She disappeared while swimming and everyone presumes her dead, but Floyd can't accept this; he believes she was drawn away by an undertow and struck her head: that she's wandering now with amnesia but someday will return to him. Business is dwindling at the shack, but he refuses all offers to buy him out: he's keeping the place for Dorothy to come home to. In the meantime Louise (Teri Garr) keeps him company, and wants more, a real commitment from him - her frustration is touching and funny. She can argue down all of his high-flown romantic notions, and his practical objections too, but when he remembers his loss he grows wistful and drifts away where she can't reach him. Their sad-tinged love affair is played out with screwball logic. It's Jimmy (Elias Koteas), a mildly retarded young man who sweeps up around the shack and cares for Floyd's in-and-out senile father (Burgess Meredith), who twists the screw to its tightest, by doing something so ghastly - something that would be absurdly funny if it weren't too appalling for laughter - and then tops even that by springing the worst possible plan to resolve matters, at the worst possible moment. "Full Moon in Blue Water" takes a kidding approach to the "magic" of romance, but on some level believes in it too; that it's able to keep both attitudes in play at the same time may be the best of what it shares with "Moonstruck." Its special distinctions are worth discovering.
RARubin
Lately I've been on a Gene Hackman 1980's kick. Hoosiers, many folks think is the best portrayal of a sports coach, maybe the best sports film ever made. Twice in a Lifetime is a middle-aged love story of betrayal in a blue-collar family and it ranks up there as the best of Hackman's work. Then there is a less successful film, Full Moon in Blue Water.No one in the movies in the last thirty years portrays the middle-age everyman, the tough, and hard working, Joe like Hackman. He's certainly not a romantic idol, but he is manly enough to woe Ann Margaret in Once in a Lifetime and Teri Garr in Water. In addition, Garr is very good as a faded honky-tonk town girl with widower, Hackman in her sights. The trouble, Hack is still in love with his missing spouse. He spends most of his days watching old home movies of the lost wife while his saloon business goes to pieces. Also, he must deal with a stroke victim, the father-in-law, Burgesss Meredith, the quintessential old coot.Somehow the viewer will not believe that a capable character like Hack would let a business go to sleazy Real Estate snakes without a bar brawl. The idea that Hack would moon about the ex for a year while busty Garr is all over him; well, it doesn't add up.
AD
