This a comedy that is not funny and a caper that is not interesting. The 83 minutes felt like twice that. The pitch for this picture is almost unimaginable--lets make a movie about a real estate deal and tell it through the the voice of an actress who is unwatchable. We'll waste the talents of great actors like Rip Torn and Jeff Bridges, and kill off a clutch of C- actors along the way. Bridges is a low-rent, charming bar owner who just wants his estranged wife, Kim Basinger to sign the divorce papers so he can refinance his bar. There is no chemistry between Basinger and Bridges, and the Hollywood version of funny southerners is as stale and terrible as ever. Just a rung or two up from the Dukes of Hazard. The hokey accents and music are unintentionally funny. The positive reviews are absolutely baffling.

***SPOILERS*** It's 1954 when back then we were all young and innocent as Nadine Hightower, Kim Basinger, goes to the office of photographer Raymond Escobar, Jerry Stiller, to retrieve a number of cheesecake photos he took of her the day before. Nadine feels that if made public the photos would ruin her cultivated over the years girl next door image. Before you can say "Stiller & Mera" Escobar is stabbed off camera by an unknown assailant as Nadine is locked,for safe keeping, in his closet! On Escobar is a yellow envelope of what at first Nadine thought was her photo spread but instead it turns out to be photos of a new government super-highway being built in and around Austin Texas! We never quite know who murdered Escobar but the fact that he hid the blueprints for the superhighway in Nadine's file shows that he expected that someone was out to get him! That together with the photo-stats of the highway In order to buy up the land around it at dirt cheap prices and end up making a killing on it! The only killing that he made was in icing himself: Raymond Escobar.1930's like screwball comedy with a few murders mixed in for good measures has Nadine and her soon to be divorced, until be buys her a late model car with air conditioning, screwy husband Vernon,Jeff Bridges,on the run from shady land developer Buford Pope, Rip Torn, and his bumbling henchmen Cecil & Floyd, Gary Gubbs & Mickey Jones, all throughout the movie. Pope who later after Floyd screwed things up for him for the last time blew him away in sheer frustration making the odds switch to both Nadine & Vernon, with Cecil now completely out of the picture, by them outnumbering him, minus his henchmen, two to one.There's as also Vernon's greedy and back stabbing third cousin Dwight Estes, Jay Patterson, who threw his lot in with Pope and ended up, when Pope thought that things were going his way,getting blasted by him when he stupidly asked for his share in getting him the photo-stats from Vernon. **SPOILERS*** The ending of the movie was both a real gem & unexpected surprise with both Vernon & Nadine at the local police station up on charges for stealing US Government top secret documents: The blueprint or photos of the new superhighway. And all that was found on them was what Nadine was looking for in the first place! Something that you won't send her and Vernon for as much as 7 to 15 years behind bars in a federal prison!

Let me begin by saying I am just astonished to see the low average of viewer comments for this splendid movie. I just have to figure the commenters are a bunch of Yankees who never set foot in the South and have no feel for the slow, quiet humor that this fine film represents.But even that cultural adjustment doesn't explain the complete failure of these other reviewers to appreciate a really finely drawn comedy, from beginning to end. This is a wonderful work by the fine writer and director Robert Benton, who defies the axiom, Comedy is hard. He makes it look easy.What he did was simple, looking back, but so very hard for most people to do: He set up a funny plot and kept it funny from one scene to another, by keeping it low key and letting the characters carry the humor lightly, one slightly ridiculous moment after the other, thus avoiding the great comedic danger: You can kill comedy by overworking it.Benton takes a plausible story about some Texas corruption and discovered maps with some amusing twists to it and jacks it up with some great dialogue and some fine actors -- mostly Southern, as it happens: the fine actor Rip Torn (birth name, Ripley J. Torn, Jr., Texas) and Kim Basinger (Alabama). Robert Benton himself is from Waxahatchie, Texas, and wrote the screenplay with full knowledge and confidence of the plausibility of the plot and the reality of his characters.Folks, I know lots of people like these characters. So do you. Good people, simple people, women who on the phone who soon ask, How's yer Mom 'n 'em? And Benton has given them a moment of great adventure and humor.A few gems: Jeff Bridges: "I'm not in the Vernon Darlin' business anymore." Basinger naming her early fetus Doris Isabel and talking to her. Rip Torn: "Why is it you work your butt off all your life to get ahead and it takes two nitwits about ten minutes to screw the whole thing up." And in her most glorious beauty, Glenne Headley as the girlfriend, full of Texas spunk.I truly pity the Yankees and Californians west of Bakersfield who cannot see the beauty of this film. But you know what? We don't need you. This movie is like Elvis. It will live forever.

This is a very cute comedy caper movie. Kim Basinger is perfect as the ditsy West Texas small town girl, and Jeff Bridges is great as her even dumber husband. Rip Torn is also good as the villain. Plot is pretty simple, but fun. I've shared this with several others in the 35+ year old class, and they all enjoyed it. Very good chemistry between the leads.