Starring: Jessica Lange, Tommy Lee Jones, Rip Torn, David Dukes, Penny Fuller Directed By: Jack Hofsiss Average Rating: Audience Rating: G (General Audience) Binding: VHS Tape Format: Color, Original recording reissued, NTSC Label: Monterey Video Number of Items: 1 Release Date: September 12, 2000 Running Time: 144 minutes Theatrical Release Date: 1985
Amazon.com: It sounds like perfect casting: Jessica Lange and Tommy Lee Jones do one of Tennessee Williams's most powerful works. But this filmed stage play doesn't quite fulfill the promise. Lange certainly has all the right ingredients: the sensual moves, the fluttering neuroses, the scheming-with-a-smile, but it doesn't quite ring true. It's as if the star and her director failed to make the full transition from stage acting to the smaller, more nuanced acting demands of film. Jones is badly miscast as Brick--the character is mopey and riven with insecurities, while Jones's forte is garrulous confidence. It feels like he's acting with a muzzle on. Rip Torn is terrific as Big Daddy (his scenes with Jones are the best in the piece) and the rest of the cast is all up to the game. Tennessee Williams reworked the script for this American Playhouse production, restoring some sexual frankness lost in earlier productions. The piece has some real fireworks, and not just in the places you might expect. Lange and Jones would team up again to better effect in the 1994 drama Blue Sky. --Geof Miller
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof Not many folks know about this TV version of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. I have been looking for it everywhere and finally found it on Amazon. I think it's a fabulous rendition of the Tenessee Williams play featuring an ex-football jock, his frustrated wife and the dynamics of a family hankering for a piece of a dying man's fortune. Tommy Lee Jones and Jessica Lang are outstanding as Brick and Maggie the Cat.
I also own the Paul Newman/Elizabeth Taylor version of this play. It's an undisputed classic, but If you are a fan of the story, you should also view the Jessica Lang/Tommy Lee Jones version. In some ways, I think this version is even more intense than the more universally known classic.
Jones and Lange smolder, Torn founders The acting in this is fine; Lange is delectably sultry, Jones is excellent as a washed-up drunk.
But the accent Rip Torn uses in this has got to be the worst Southern accent ever committed to film (and that includes Kevin Costner's execrably awful accent in Oliver Stone's 'JFK'). Sounds like Foghorn Leghorn channelling Leon Redbone. I broke up laughing at how bad it was.
Agreed, this is much better than the Taylor-Newman-Ives Hollywood piece. But viewers might want to check out the version made with Olivier as Big Daddy, Natalie Wood as Maggie and Robert Wagner as Brick. Excellent all around, and Olivier sounds much more like an arrogant Southern planter than Rip Torn does. At least you're not laughing at it.
Excellent reendition of Williams' classic play I can remember watching this on Showtime back in 1984, and both then and now, I can not deny just how much justice the cast and crew did to Williams' classic play of alcoholism, homosexuality, death, and so on. Jessica Lange is incredibly sexy as the sexually frustrated Maggie the Cat, while Tommy Lee Jones is superb as her alcoholic ex-sports announcer husband, Brick. Gorgeous set designs and powerful acting from the entire accomplished cast make for a wonderfully entertaining, updated version of a modern classic.
The Story Finally Makes Sense Of course everyone will compare this 1984 remake of one of Tennessee Williams' best plays with the 1950's version starring Elizabeth Taylor and Paul Newman. The director, actors and everyone else involved in this production have nothing to be embarrassed about for this is a fine movie indeed. In fairness to the Taylor-Newman movie, because of the censorship of that repressed era, the plot does not make a lot of sense. These actors though have the advantage of working with a story that Mr. Williams had revised so that the relationship that Brick and Skipper had that keeps interfering with Brick's marriage with Maggie now makes sense. ("A pure and true thing is not normal.") Additionally Taylor and Newman are so incredibly attractive that sometimes their good looks get in the way of their acting. Here we have really stellar performances by Jessica Lange as Maggie, Tommy Lee Jones as Brick-- he's a lot better than many of the critics say-- Rip Torn as Big Daddy and Kim Stanley as Big Momma. Tommy Lee Jones does some terrific acting with just his eyes and facial expressions alone. Jessica Lange continues to demonstrate that she is one of the best actresses of her generation. She gives a beautifully nuanced performance, expressing a wide range of emotions and can go from a vulnerable, lovable kitten to a clawing cat at the turn of a fan. The scenes between Big Daddy and Brick, through excruciating, are very moving.
While Mr. Willams as usual places his characters in the South, they resemble dysfunctional families everywhere. Greed, sexual repression, sibling rivalry, dishonesty, awareness of one's own mortality and family in-fighting know no geographical boundries.
Mr. Williams would be proud of this production.
accept no imitations. THIS is the best version ever done One simply couldn't ask for a better incarnation of 'Cat on a Hot Tin Roof' than this one.
Both the Amazon reviewer for this film, (and some of the subsequent Amazon audience reviewers), exhibit really stellar blindness in critiquing this tv adaptation of a fine Williams play.
Did someone actually submit that the simpering 1958 version was still better? Come ON. Holy hannah. That absurd piece of Hollywood fluff, which did its best to dodge every subtext the play had to offer? Gimme a break.
Theatre fans, this Torn/Jones/Lange version has what it takes to do the play justice. Toss the negative reviews out the window, they aren't worth the narrow bandwidth they were written on. Sheeeeesh.
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