Masterful Movie

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

This is ultimately a movie about the very bad things that can happen when we don't address our unease, when we just try to brush it off, whether that's to fit in or to preserve our self-image.

As a movie standing by itself, The Evening Star is a decent film with strong performances by MacLaine and Richardson. However, as a sequel to Terms of Endearment, the movie is mostly middling.The plot line starts off about fifteen to sixteen years after Terms ended. The grandchildren are now all grown, and each has their own problems. Aurora remains the queen bee, but feels like she is losing her family, as her grandchildren resent her interfering and blame her for their current state. Added to the mix is Patsy, Emma's rich best friend and Aurora's nemesis who feels like she could have done a better job raising Melanie. Also along for the ride is Rosie, Aurora's long term maid and companion.The movie mainly follows Aurora as she attempts to deal with life, by dating various men and trying to put her grandchildren on the right path.There are a number of problems with this movie. The first being the complete lack of Flap Horton, the children's father. Here, he has no role in his children's lives, and he is only briefly mentioned as living in New Mexico. The second issue is the character of Melanie. She is essentially a stand in for Emma in this movie, but the dynamic between her and Aurora is underdeveloped and does not work very well. The other two grandchildren, Tommy and Teddy, are even more underdeveloped. The fourth issue is the virtual cavalcade of death this movie becomes in its second half where three main characters die! The one positive note is the Patsy/Aurora relationship. Both actresses have a good chemistry and play well off each other. You can feel the way each resents the other, but it is also understood that at the end of the day, there is a grudging respect.So overall, not a bad movie, but don't watch it expecting another Terms.

I don't understand the point of this movie. "Terms of Endearment" already did all this - and it was better. What's the point of bringing Shirley MacLaine back almost fifteen years later? The original audience of the first film are much older by then and younger girls don't give a damn because they weren't around when the original was released. Do you see a point? Neither do I. Perhaps that's why it flopped when it came out.MacLaine returns to her role and basically this movie is just her life and we get an update on how she's living. Juliette Lewis and Bill Paxton get little to do - Lewis is annoying as usual and frankly I wouldn't mind if she just stopped acting permanently tomorrow.The best thing about this film has to be Jack's cameo appearance as Garrett. It almost saves a failing movie - but once he leaves it all falls apart again.

If you read my comments about "Terms of Endearment" (1983), you will notice I said it was a film I avoided for a while, then finally got around to seeing. In fact, I only heard about the sequel, "The Evening Star" shortly after I saw "Terms." In fact, "Star" came on TV shortly after I learned about it and I decided to give it a watch, even though I was probably going to be bored and disappointed. To my surprise, it was quite the opposite. It may start off on a boring start, but soon you will find yourself very involved with the characters and the multi-story plot, just like "Terms." Shirley MacLaine handled herself pretty well in this, maybe even more so than "Terms," but Miranda Richardson and Juliette Lewis seem out of place and they overact sometimes. Jack Nicholson's cameo was quite appropriate within the plot and he does a great job. Like the first film, the ending is memorable and falls in the "tear-jerking" category.

Could be summed up by that sentence. There are some funny moments in it. Classic Aurora control scenes and blow-off lines. but it'a mess... The title could have been "Terms of Endearment 2: Return to the Cash Cow." What could possibly be more unnecessary than a sequel to Terms of Endearment? Because the pivotal relationship was eliminated by Wingers exit in the first film, this sequel has no focus. What had been an amusing take on the funny and sad moments in an erratic mother-daughter relationship, has become a plot less holding pattern. There is no central emotional relationship to care about and the characters have little to do. They have not found a suitable foil for Aurora here. The relationship between Patsy and Aurora which had been quietly disagreeable, is now full-on antagonism. And that's a familiar, unsatisfying device to duct-tape a story onto.If you were wondering what happens next after Terms ended, the answer is that the characters continued living. Whoopee. "Star" tries to milk tender emotions from you, but those feelings are given no foundation. It just moves on to some new unrelated emotional "payload" every ten minutes or so. Whether this went on for an hour or three (which it feels like) it just wears you down. The creators fail to understand that extraneous undeveloped characters (who've barely been introduced) can only deliver phony emotional epiphanies. It's so overwritten that superfluous sub-plots are M.I.A. for an hour at a time. It has so many false endings, that I gave up shortly after Nicholsons odd, special-guest-star appearance. He arrives to spout some tender inexplicable pseudo-Oprah drivel. It's like it was written by Edna Ferber. It goes on and on and on...