This is a series of vignettes in the life of a mid-West family rather than a straight ahead narrative, it is, if you like, Meet Me In St Louis without the songs. The form is still viable as the recent French film The First Day Of The Rest Of Your Life demonstrated last year. Newman and Woodward are, of course, beyond praise, and it's a delight to see Newman, who can epitomise the extrovert, playing a repressed, buttoned-up type in the best English tradition as written by Terence Rattigan. The film takes its own sweet time getting nowhere and has Art House written all over it so much so that it's difficult to imagine it making it through the first reel in the Multiplexes. Apart from the two leads there's fine support from the likes of Blythe Danner, Kyra Sedgwick and Simon Callow and if peering through a microscope at insects busy doing nothing is your thing then you came to the right place.

My first thought upon seeing this depression-era period film was that no one could have ever been so stuffy, stupid, and socially constrained as the middle age/elderly couple played by Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward. But, then, I remembered that my grandparents were just like them, as were most of their contemporaries. What a limited life they led, and thank god for today's enlightenment.That women could have ever been so totally and willingly dependent, physically and mentally, on their husbands is now hard to imagine, but it did happen and was typical in the days when women did not work outside of the home. The film showed, over and over, dependency scenes that emphasized the helplessness and powerlessness of women in those depression era days. It got real aggravating after a while, but was offset somewhat by Woodward's character's inner goodness and sweetness. She was dumb as a mud fence, though.Newman was terrifically stuffy and dictatorial in his role and Woodward was terrifically dependent, incompetent, weak and stupid in hers. Wonderful work, and they both often had me steaming with their respective behavior, as I put up with a lot of this type of baloney when young. As their daughter, Kyra Sedgewick showed well that the "future" was going to be a lot different for women than the present by her unmistakable signs of emancipated behavior.The film's story was ended so well by Woodward's character getting stuck in her car in her garage, as she was so dependent and ignorant about how to do anything in life for herself that she sat in her car for hours without even trying to figure out a very easy solution to her problem. At the end, she was merely sitting there waiting and calling for many hours for others to "rescue" her from her easily solved predicament(if she only could have had an original thought), just as she had done all her incompetent and dependent life. What a great ending, and a great example of how not to be in real life. Thank god again that things have changed.

the two books this movie was based on are some of my favorites. they perfectly, poignantly, and sometimes humorously capture the lives of an upper middle class couple of their time. the movie did a good job getting some parts right, but of course it pales in comparison to the two books. for those who live in or know kansas city well, its an interesting film. i live in the neighborhood in which it was set and go to the same places the characters did. otherwise, its still an interesting study of the lives of its time period.

You sit and wait, sit and wait, and after 2,5 hours when the movie is over, you wonder why you sat and waited. An absolute useless movie. A woman being treated like a slave all her life, being misunderstood even by her own children. The greatest moment in her life is when her hubby gives her a handpainted picture in Paris (a replica). Wow! No thread leading thru this movie, no plot, no climax, no hope.You would not expect good actors like Newman/Woodward in such a shallow movie. Even as a 30 min - sitcom, this movie would drive me nuts.The only reason why I did not switch off or fall asleep was the hope to detect at least one second of a sense, at least in the last minute.BUT: there was none.