olliewim
This is one of my favorite movies, because it brings me smack dab back to my four years of college in Houston. I can understand people who haven't lived in Texas thinking this movie is poor or nonsensical. I'm not even sure what it is about it, that so perfectly captures what I love about Texas and Texans, but I'll try...First off the Dairy Queen! You have to have at least driven through a big swathe of TX to realize that every small town has a DQ, and its often more of a town nerve center than City Hall. In some places I think it IS the City Hall. That's a delicious inside joke.Let's see...making a hobby of sitting in the hot tub, drinking vodka and shooting up the dog house. "Our steaks are in the deep freeze...we'd all be so drunk by the time they thawed out, no tellin' who'd get shot!" Lester getting suicidal, then springing himself from "the quiet room" to go help look for the old man that fell out of the car, when he tried to spit out his tobacco.Um, four people and a dog driving in a pickup truck. Voluntarily. (OK two of them were the tweeny twins, but still.) I don't know about all of the sleeping around, but all of the moving around (Karla and kids at Jacy's, Jacy at Karla and Duane's, Mary Lou and Jacy taking road trips with Duane just for the hell of it)...so many of the native Texans I've known are restless to the point of ADD.And just the wacky, emphatic but heartfelt attitude, Karla more than any of them. As others have noted, Annie Potts darn near steals the entire movie. But I thought the whole cast did well.
Joshua C. Scott (swtweath2)
Having never had the patience or the time of sitting through The Last Picture Show, I picked this movie up on a whim. I had seen once several years ago with my family and remembered it as being OK. For some unknown reason, I came across it at Amazon.com and decided to order it to watch it again. The second time I watched it, I enjoyed it, but some of the nuances of the movie seemed to be lacking. I suppose if I had seen the original movie I might have had more of an idea of what some of the plot twists meant. Annie Potts is at her best here playing the wife of the main character. Cybill Shepherd's character (Jaycee) while having just suffered the loss of a child seemed even more emotionless than one would expect after sustaining such a loss. I did enjoy the location of the movie (Texas) and the craziness of small town living.Overall the ensemble cast is decent, but the movie is somewhat long and tends to drag. There's also not much resolution at the end which disappointed me (I liked my movies to end with a nice wrap up or a decent "pull-together" at the end). If you enjoy any of the actors, it's worth watching.6/10
wilster-4
On first viewing I would have voted a 5. But something stuck with me and I've watched the movie - studied the movie - about 8 or 9 times now ... in three weeks. Texasville is brilliant. True to 80s American oil country livin', wonderfully shot to capture big-sky light, and so full of detail one or two or even three viewings are not enough. I'd say the density of nuance is easily twice the standard movie average. That many will dislike this movie is not surprising. Contrary to first impressions, Texasville is not popular culture. As a cut above, this movie will fly right on by most viewers - particularly those many who will not or cannot relate to anything in it. But for those of us who've lived some Texasville ... many thanks are owed Peter, Larry, Cybil, Jeff and the rest.
J_Knox
Texasville is easily one of my favorite movies of all time because it doesn't go down the easy road, trying to please everyone, by being the same movie as Last Picture Show was. However, after having seen both Picture Show and Texasville back to back I noticed how surprisingly similar in context and theme they are. Both are about sad adults who look longingly onto the younger generation, all the while committing adultery as a way of recapturing their youth. I love both Picture Show and Texasville equally; but have a soft spot for Texasville because I was 11 during the timeframe shown in the movie, and 17 when it came out in 1990 so it is a bit more relevant to me. Also the dark humor helps make the film more enjoyable for those hot summer nights when the urge hits me to see it.I've never thought of Texasville as fiction, more as cinematic fact. It's about as close to real life as you'll get without living it yourself. It was one of the first films I saw in a theatre as a cinema "connoisseur" and it'd be a shame to let it fade into obscurity. I highly recommend it to anyone reading this, a true minor masterpiece
AD
