
The summer of 1984: 32 years after Duane Jackson captained the high school football team and Jacy Farrow was homecoming queen, the small town of Anarene, Texas prepares for its centennial celebration. Oil prices are down, banks are failing, and Duane's $12 million in debt. His wife Karla drinks too much, his children are always in trouble, and he tom-cats around with the wives of friends. Jacy's back in town, after a mildly successful acting career, life in Italy, and the dea... (Full plot summary below)
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The summer of 1984: 32 years after Duane Jackson captained the high school football team and Jacy Farrow was homecoming queen, the small town of Anarene, Texas prepares for its centennial celebration. Oil prices are down, banks are failing, and Duane's $12 million in debt. His wife Karla drinks too much, his children are always in trouble, and he tom-cats around with the wives of friends. Jacy's back in town, after a mildly successful acting career, life in Italy, and the death of her son. People assume Duane and Jacy will resume their high school romance. And Sonny is "tired in his mind," causing worries for his safety. Can these friends find equilibrium in middle age?
Leave your thoughts about Texasville.
| The Seattle TimesJohn HartlAlthough the film is built around the town's big centennial celebration, there are no big dramatic events in the usual sense; the film's focus is the complications, readjustments, and discoveries of middle age, and it's entirely to the credit of old movie buff Bogdanovich, who wrote the script, that there isn't a single film reference in sight. |
| Seattle Post-IntelligencerWilliam ArnoldThe town seems to be as preoccupied as ever with its own personalities and memories, as if it were sitting for its portrait. |
| Chicago Sun-TimesRoger EbertIt is, in a sense, like a high school reunion, taking people we last saw in 1951 and continuing their histories in the early 1980s. |
| Rolling StonePeter TraversThe real burned-out case is director-writer Peter Bogdanovich. The Last Picture Show made his reputation, and these aging Texans trying to rediscover their innocence obviously touch him deeply. But Bogdanovich’s style has turned heavy, crude and incoherent. |
| Christian Science MonitorDavid SterrittLike Sonny’s moving pictures in his mind, Bogdanovich sees things we can’t; when we can join him--in moments of family and connectedness--Texasville is touching. Most other times it’s the darndest mess you ever saw. |
| Dispatch-Tribune NewspapersSteve CrumGood but far from great sequel to Bogdanovich's "Last Picture Show." |
| Portland OregonianTed MaharThere are times when Texasville, like the Larry McMurtry novel on which it is based, seems top heavy with eccentrics. Everybody is tirelessly and (worse) lovably oddball. The snappy dialogue occasionally exhausts. Yet also like the book, the movie becomes seriously involving, a cockeyed acknowledgment of an especially American kind of inarticulate despair. |
| EmpireMat SnowAn amazing exercise in character development which successfully shows the character as they were in the first film and as they are now. It is flawed in the basics, but often delightful in detail. |
| Apollo GuideScott WeinbergThe Last Picture Show is a stark and hypnotic portrait of a West Texas town in its final death throes, a lyrical and touching film about friendship and love and sex. Texasville is about nothing. |
| Washington PostRita KempleyBogdanovich, who worked with McMurtry on the Last Picture Show screenplay, adapted this one on his own. It's kinda like he tried to pare down the big ol' Encyclopaedia Britannica and couldn't bear to leave out nothin' -- a lot of Billy Joe Bob types talking guff and hogwash and settin' round the Burger King eating fried eggs. This is purty near the worst movie of the whole year. |