Thelma & Louise (1991)

User Rating:

7.3/10   

Director:

Ridley Scott

Writer (WGA):

Callie Khouri (written by)

Release Date:

24 May 1991 (USA)

Genre:

Adventure | Crime | Drama | Thriller

Tagline:

Somebody said get a life... so they did.

Plot:

An Arkansas waitress and a housewife shoot a rapist and take off in a '66 Thunderbird.

Plot Keywords:

Waitress | Road | Police | Friendship | On The Road

Awards:

Won Oscar. Another 12 wins & 21 nominations

Cast

Susan Sarandon	...	Louise
Geena Davis	...	Thelma
Harvey Keitel	...	Hal
Michael Madsen	...	Jimmy
Christopher McDonald	...	Darryl
Stephen Tobolowsky	...	Max
Brad Pitt	...	J.D.
Timothy Carhart	...	Harlan
Lucinda Jenney	...	Lena - the Waitress
Jason Beghe	...	State Trooper
Sonny Carl Davis	...	Albert
Ken Swofford	...	Major
Shelly Desai	...	East Indian Motel Clerk (as Shelly De Sai)
Carol Mansell	...	Waitress
Stephen Polk	...	Surveillance Man

Also Known As:

Thelma & Louise (France)
Thelma and Louise (USA) (alternative spelling)

MPAA:

Rated R for strong language, and for some violence and sensuality.

Runtime:

129 min

Country:

USA | France

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Sound Mix:

Dolby SR

Certification:

Singapore:M18 | Iceland:12 | Brazil:14 | USA:R (No. 31011) | Canada:18A (Canadian Home Video rating) | New Zealand:M | Argentina:16 | Australia:M | Chile:18 | Finland:K-14 | France:U | Germany:16 | Netherlands:12 | Norway:15 | Peru:18 | South Korea:18 | Spain:13 | Sweden:15 | UK:15 | Portugal:M/16

Filming Locations:

Bakersfield, California, USA

Company:

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM)

Trivia:

Ridley Scott is very receptive to ideas from cast and crew members on his films, and used many suggestions from Susan Sarandon during production. Some ideas of Sarandon's that made the final cut of the film: the visual of Louise packing her shoes in plastic bags while prepping for the lady's weekend getaway in the mountains; the scene where Louise exchanges her jewelry for the old man's hat; and the scene where Louise stops the car in the desert at night and takes a personal moment looking at the stars while Thelma sleeps in the car. That last scene idea took half the night to light. Sarandon and her longtime partner Tim Robbins reworked most of the dialog in the sequence between Louise and her boyfriend Jimmy at the hotel in Oklahoma City. Originally that scene called for Louise and Jimmy to make love and conduct an impromptu mock wedding ceremony. Sarandon felt that having sex would be the last thing Louise would be interested in doing at that point in the story and told Scott that if she performed the sequence as written that they would have to include a scene where Louise would wig out as a result. And prior to signing on to do the film, Scott gave Sarandon his word that he would not change the ending of the movie. She had just experienced that on her last movie, White Palace (1990), with the original, ambiguous ending being scrapped in favor of a more upbeat one and did not want "Thelma & Louise" to meet a similar fate.

Goofs:

Crew or equipment visible: Susan Sarandon's stunt double can be seen in the review mirror just before the car drives off the cliff.

Quotes:

[first lines]
Louise Sawyer: Decaf or regular?
Girl in diner: Uh, regular, please.
Louise Sawyer: You girls are kinda young to be smokin', dontcha think? Ruins your sex drive.

Movie Connections:

Spoofed in Babes Illustrated 3 (1995) (V)

Soundtrack:

Better Not Look Down

More than an exercise in male-bashing

This is an important commercial film aimed at blue collar women who feel victimized by both society and the men in their lives. Directed by Ridley Scott, who directed the science fiction classics, Alien (1979) and Blade Runner (1982), Thelma and Louise is an on-the-lam chick flick (with chase scenes), a kind of femme Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), somewhat akin to Wild at Heart (1990) and Natural Born Killers (1994) but without the gratuitous violence of those films. Ridley Scott walks the razor edge between femme-exploitation and serious social commentary. Incidentally, the script is by Callie Khouri who wrote Something to Talk About (1995) and Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood (2002) which should give you an idea of how men are depicted here.

Susan Sarandon is Louise, a thirty-something Arkansas waitress with an attitude and some emotional baggage, and Geena Davis is Thelma, a cloistered ingenue housewife with a yearning to breath free. Both do an outstanding job and carry the film from beginning to end. The characters they play are well-rounded and fully developed and sympathetic, in contrast to the men in the film who are for the most part merely clichés, or in the case of Darryl (Christopher McDonald), Thelma's boorish husband, or the troll-like truck driver, burlesques.

I have never seen Geena Davis better. Her unique style is melded very well into a naive woman who never had a chance to express herself, but goes hog wild and seems a natural at it when the time comes. Sarandon is also at the top of her game and plays the crusty, worldly wise, vulnerable Louise with tenderness and understanding. Note, by the way, her pinned up in back hair-style, directly lifted from TV's Polly Holliday ("Kiss my grits!") who appeared as a waitress in the seventies sitcoms "Alice" and "Flo."

Harvey Keitel plays the almost sympathetic cop, Hal Slocumb, and Brad Pitt appears as J. D., a sweet-talking twenty-something who gives Thelma the script for robbing 7-11s as he steals more than her libido.

This movie works because it is funny and sad by turns and expresses the yearning we all have to be free of the restraints of society and its institutions (symbolized in the wide-open spaces of the American Southwest) while representing the on again, off again incompatibility of the male and female heart. The male-bashing is done with a touch of humor and the targets are richly deserving of what they get. The ending is perhaps too theatrical and frankly unrealistic, but opinions may differ.

Best and most telling quick scene is when Thelma phones Darryl to see if he has found out about their escapades. Weasel-like, he is trying to help the cops locate them, but he is so transparent to her that all she has to do is hear his voice. "He knows," she says to Louise and hangs up.

Best visual is when the black police helicopter appears suddenly, menacingly like a giant fly beneath the horizon of the Grand Canyon. Also excellent were the all those squad cars lined up like armored battalions aimed at the girls on the run.

I also liked the scenes at the motel with J.D. and Louise's boyfriend. They were beautifully directed and cut, and very well conveyed by Sarandon and Davis, depicting two contrasting stages in male-female relationships.

See this for Geena Davis because she was brilliant, vividly alive and never looked better.