Tuesday, June 05, 2012

Overlooked Movies -- Fandango

Okay, you know if you've followed the blog for very long that I'm a sucker for coming-of-age stories, and I love this one. One reason is that a lot of it was filmed in Texas. The director is Kevin Reynolds (it was his first movie), and he's a graduate of Baylor, where his dad was president. The graduates in the movie, however, are supposedly from The University of Texas at Austin.

Besides being a coming-of-age story, it's also a road movie. The year is 1971, and Viet Nam's in full swing. Kevin Costner and four of his fraternity brothers (one of whom remains mostly unconscious for the entire running time) know that their draft numbers are up. They decide to have one last fling before whatever comes next, and they set off in a beautiful blue Cadillac. You can see a little of it in the poster there on the left. They have some amazing and hilarious adventures before the end of the journey, and I got a huge kick out of all of them. You can check the trailer above for some snippets of two of them.

I'm a nostalgic kind of guy, and this movie pushed a lot of the right buttons for me. It was the movie that brought Costner (who's very good) and Kevin Reynolds together, but don't hold that against it. Check it out.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I saw this after seeing THE BIG CHILL (from which, of course, Costner's character was cut) and agree with you - good one.

Jeff

Sergio (Tipping My Fedora) said...

Love this movie Bill, great choice as it is a truly overlooked flick. I saw it when it came out (albeit dubbed into Italian) and still htink sit holds up remarkably well (especially the ending). Proud to have it in my DVD collection.

38 said...

I think it is an okay flick but something about it creeped me out. I do not recall what.

Actor Marco Perella's book talks about his small part in this own where Perella is floating down a river for a dream sequence. According to Perella, Kevin Reynolds wanted to do something artistic and that was the scene. Perella was cold and miserable the entire time.

Gerard said...

Kevin Costner never met a 2 hour script he couldn't turn into 6 hour movie.