Ten-year-old Tatum O'Neal is no Shirley Temple in this tale of a Midwestern miscreant (Ryan O'Neal, her dad) who adopts her while scamming bereaved widows into buying his phony, inscribed Bibles. The two O'Neals scrap constantly as they meander from town to town and misadventure to misadventure. Tatum quickly proves as adept at conning people as her dad does and they form quite a team, despite the spats.
It's an enjoyable film, a comedy with slightly darker undertones. Ryan's affair with Miss Trixie Delight (Madeline Kahn) is emblematic. Ryan picks up Kahn, a cootch dancer and sometime hooker, at a carnival and she and her young, black servant join the O'Neals on their trip through Kansas. Kahn is pretty shallow, though, even compared to the two O'Neals. Ryan spends lavishly on her and presumably is comforted in return by whatever it is that she has and he wants. (This is the 1930s and "times are hard.") Tatum is resentful of Kahn, not only because she sees through her but because Kahn is preempting Tatum's place in the car's front seat. So Tatum becomes jealous and angry and at one point refuses to get into the car with the rest. Kahn tries to talk some sense into her and lays the whole thing out in plain language. Kahn gets something, Ryan gets something, and the two kids get something, and everything will end sooner or later with everybody a little happier. Tatum simply scowls back. "You're going to spoil everything, aren't you?", Kahn says, genuinely rueful.
Tatum is manipulative enough to arrange for Ryan to barge into Kahn's hotel room while Kahn is picking up a few extra dollars from the hotel clerk.
I guess we're supposed to be happy to see Madeline Kahn thrown out of the party, so the O'Neals can go on their happy way unencumbered. After all, Kahn is sickeningly elegant ("I have to go winkie-tinkie again"), while Tatum is plumb forthright ("I have to go to the ****house"). And Kahn sells her body, too. I must be perverse because I didn't find the outcome satisfying. Sure, Kahn is a liar and exploiter. And the O'Neals? As the Good Book says, "Let him who is without sin cast the first stone." Ryan winds up getting clobbered by some crooks he stole money from (John Hillerman -- great). And the two continue their merry journey together, broke but happy.
The film does its best to evoke the 1930s, for the most part successfully. A movie marquee advertises John Ford's "Steamboat Round the Bend." The O'Neals call their hot dogs "coney islands". There always seems to be a radio playing contemporary pop songs like "Keep Your Sunny Side Up." It's nicely photographed and captures the area around Hays, Kansas, pretty well, though color wouldn't have spoiled the production. The overall tone is comic and heartwarming and written and edited in a way to sound outrageous -- Tatum smokes cigarettes and knows all about sex -- though I suspect the only people who might titter at her faux sophistication would be elderly people living in towns smaller than Hays, Kansas.
It's not exactly infinitely cracking, but it's so good-natured that you'll probably like it as much as I did.
It's an enjoyable film, a comedy with slightly darker undertones. Ryan's affair with Miss Trixie Delight (Madeline Kahn) is emblematic. Ryan picks up Kahn, a cootch dancer and sometime hooker, at a carnival and she and her young, black servant join the O'Neals on their trip through Kansas. Kahn is pretty shallow, though, even compared to the two O'Neals. Ryan spends lavishly on her and presumably is comforted in return by whatever it is that she has and he wants. (This is the 1930s and "times are hard.") Tatum is resentful of Kahn, not only because she sees through her but because Kahn is preempting Tatum's place in the car's front seat. So Tatum becomes jealous and angry and at one point refuses to get into the car with the rest. Kahn tries to talk some sense into her and lays the whole thing out in plain language. Kahn gets something, Ryan gets something, and the two kids get something, and everything will end sooner or later with everybody a little happier. Tatum simply scowls back. "You're going to spoil everything, aren't you?", Kahn says, genuinely rueful.
Tatum is manipulative enough to arrange for Ryan to barge into Kahn's hotel room while Kahn is picking up a few extra dollars from the hotel clerk.
I guess we're supposed to be happy to see Madeline Kahn thrown out of the party, so the O'Neals can go on their happy way unencumbered. After all, Kahn is sickeningly elegant ("I have to go winkie-tinkie again"), while Tatum is plumb forthright ("I have to go to the ****house"). And Kahn sells her body, too. I must be perverse because I didn't find the outcome satisfying. Sure, Kahn is a liar and exploiter. And the O'Neals? As the Good Book says, "Let him who is without sin cast the first stone." Ryan winds up getting clobbered by some crooks he stole money from (John Hillerman -- great). And the two continue their merry journey together, broke but happy.
The film does its best to evoke the 1930s, for the most part successfully. A movie marquee advertises John Ford's "Steamboat Round the Bend." The O'Neals call their hot dogs "coney islands". There always seems to be a radio playing contemporary pop songs like "Keep Your Sunny Side Up." It's nicely photographed and captures the area around Hays, Kansas, pretty well, though color wouldn't have spoiled the production. The overall tone is comic and heartwarming and written and edited in a way to sound outrageous -- Tatum smokes cigarettes and knows all about sex -- though I suspect the only people who might titter at her faux sophistication would be elderly people living in towns smaller than Hays, Kansas.
It's not exactly infinitely cracking, but it's so good-natured that you'll probably like it as much as I did.