Instant Favorite.

Dreadfully Boring

It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

If you're interested in the topic at hand, you should just watch it and judge yourself because the reviews have gone very biased by people that didn't even watch it and just hate (or love) the creator. I liked it, it was well written, narrated, and directed and it was about a topic that interests me.

I've never seen a jack nicholson movie that wasn't chaotic so this didn't disappoint ... i just can't get into watching a film he's in ... we'd have all been better off if they hanged him at the beginning instead letting this fiasco run on

First of all, Going South is funny. And it is entertaining. So just enjoy the movie and stop analyzing it.This is a bit surprising, given Jack Nicholson's corpus. Look at the list of movies he made, and you will see this is his first comedy; not until Witches of Eastwich, 9 years later, do we see him starring in another comedy. There are comic elements in other movies of his, of course, such as the earlier One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and the bizarre Mars Attacks! But in no other movie does Nicholson play such a purely comedic role, where the movie is dependent on his comedic acting. If you look at his first 10 years of starring roles, from 1969 to 1978, you see an actor demonstrating the ability to handle a wide range of serious roles, who wants to avoid being typecast. Yet he is in some slight danger of typecasting, of playing post-60s hipsters and rather serious characters. Going South broadened his acting palette, and while he did not do much more straight comedy, he employed comic twists to lighten many of his roles, especially in "As Good As It Gets."One of the keys to good comedy that stands the test of time is not going overboard. Nicholson pushes his character to extremes, but avoids crossing the line into shallowness, in part because he gives his character such depth through his fine acting. There is a lot of shallow contemporary comedy out there now, and current actors and directors could learn a lot from watching this movie. Nicholson immersed himself so fully in this role that some viewers seem to assume naively that Nicholson was really like Henry Lloyd Moon, at least at the time. He's an actor! (See The Passenger - 1975.)I'm a bit puzzled by some of the off the mark reviews, which seem to be due in part to judging the 1978 Nicholson by 2008 Nicholson. One "Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine," quite bizarrely complained that in Going South, Nicholson was reusing "faces and attitudes and gestures that we have already seen" ... in later films!Speaking of time travel, Going South is almost a prequel to Back to the Future, Part III, which starred the loony Christopher Lloyd and the lovely Mary Steenburgen in the wild West. Yet Going South was Steenburgen's first movie! Steenburgen delivered her role to perfection. This is interesting given her serious expression opposite Nicholson's antics. I wonder if she had a hard time keeping a straight face? But one of the things that makes this movie work is seeing Nicholson draw Steenburgen in his direction, including sexually and even to taking a drink, and Steenburgen drawing Nicholson toward taking life more seriously. You know this is coming, and in the beginning of the movie you are skeptical, and yet it is done credibly, and with a romantic touch.The scene with the brass bed is one of the most memorable of the movie. Sorry if it offended some women, but there's a lot of truth to that scene, and humor. There's no indication it was done with in a mean spirit or cruelty, which is never appropriate in romance, in or out of marriage. Thankfully, the rest of the scene is all left to the imagination, unlike some of the gratuitous, garbage sex scenes in more recent movies, like Titanic and Cold Mountain. When I watched Rooster Cogburn, I wished John Wayne had tied the eternally chattering Katherine Hepburn to a brass bed, or at least gagged her! Nicholson did a fantastic job of selecting his cast. There are several actors who are still early in their careers, including John Belushi, Danny DeVito, Veronica Cartwright (not so early, given her experience as a child actress) and Ed Begley Jr. The weakness of Going South is that it did not given more of an opportunity for Belushi and DeVito to show their stuff, but this is easily said in hindsight. Lloyd's is the only other major comic role as Nicholson's nemesis. Some rare comedies work every time you see them, and some only work once. Going South is somewhere in between; it works if you watch it every few years, but it is best the first time. It works because of the comedic tension between the key characters, because it doesn't push the comedy too far, and because there is enough serious dramatic acting underlying the performances by Nicholson and Steenburgen. Another reason it works is that not everyone in the movie is a Lloyd or Belushi; there are some normal people, like the sheriff. When everyone in a comedy is a goofball, you've got a problem. I think you need some normal people as a reference point, even in screwball comedies.Going South might have been a little better had there been more amusing lines for some of the secondary characters like DeVito and Belushi. But it is a fun movie to watch, and you get the feeling that Nicholson, Steenburgen and cast had a lot of fun making it. You might want to watch some of the other movies Nicholson made in this 10 year period before seeing Going South to get a perspective on his early work. What you will see is a great actor who has demonstrated versatility throughout his career. Perhaps the one element these performances have in common is the ability of Nicholson to project intense personal energy through the character onto the screen. We see this certainly in later films, but there are few roles where Nicholson invests more energy into his character than in Going South.

Some very good ideas in this western. Some extremely good situations. Some good suspended situations too. And yet we regret Nicholson is directing himself. He can't see himself when he is acting and that shows tremendously in the film. It explains some slow and long sequences that should have been packed in the acting itself. That explains why the actor Jack Nicholson is too often using some faces and attitudes and gestures that we have already seen in The Shining, in The Witches of Eastwood, or in many other films. He cannot see himself and thus he cannot direct himself properly. And there were and are some extremely potential situations. There could have been, and there should have been.Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne & University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines

My wife and I stumbled on to this movie while we were dating - after a few strong margaritas. It was the funniest movie we had ever seen (dating about 4 months at this point) however we viewed it later sober and it's just not quite the same. So now it's a tradition = tequila + GS. Give it a try! You will love it. And you will find yourself speaking in GS lingo before too long. My favorite line is when Abe (Henry's aged gang member friend) loses his tooth in Henry's home during a big party - he stumbles around shouting, "Anybody seen my god-damn molar?" The other favorite line from that same party was spoken by Moon to Julia - "C'mon Honey! Act foolish!" - while kicking up his heels in a unique Henry Moon Dance. My wife loves the line Moon speaks at his hanging (while still hooded) when an older woman first first chooses him as her husband - "Mrs Henry Moon! Let me look at you!" She then collapses and dies from the excitement. I think this film set the mood for JN's later works and is worth the time. I am still looking for the DVD - have nearly worn out the VHS tape.