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Title: Steel Magnolias (1989)
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| Cast overview, first billed only: | |||
| Sally Field | ... | M'Lynn Eatenton | |
| Dolly Parton | ... | Truvy Jones | |
| Shirley MacLaine | ... | Ouiser Boudreaux | |
| Daryl Hannah | ... | Annelle Dupuy Desoto | |
| Olympia Dukakis | ... | Clairee Belcher | |
| Julia Roberts | ... | Shelby Eatenton Latcherie | |
| Tom Skerritt | ... | Drum Eatenton | |
| Sam Shepard | ... | Spud Jones | |
| Dylan McDermott | ... | Jackson Latcherie | |
| Kevin J. O'Connor | ... | Sammy Desoto | |
| Bill McCutcheon | ... | Owen Jenkins | |
| Ann Wedgeworth | ... | Aunt Fern | |
 |
Knowl Johnson | ... | Tommy Eatenton |
| Jonathan Ward | ... | Jonathan Eatenton | |
| Bibi Besch | ... | Belle Marmillion | |
Pivoting around the lively Truvy Jones' Louisiana beauty parlour, a tightly-knit band of friends, confront griefs, loss, life's unforeseen tragedies and heartaches with what they do best: gossiping and sharing. The spirited diabetic and bride-to-be, Shelby; her always supportive mother, M'Lynn; Truvy's gawky assistant, Annelle; the city's curmudgeon, Ouiser; and the town's former first lady, Clairee, are the warm Southern belles who know how to survive life's challenges with their unwavering friendship. But when Shelby decides to conceive, things will turn upside down.. Written by Nick Riganas
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In a smalltown America town, the lives of a collection of friends revolve around their regular meetings at Turvy's Beauty Parlour. When we join them M'Lynn Eatenton is preparing for her diabetic daughter, Shelby, to be married to lawyer Jackson Latcherie. Meanwhile Turvy takes on a new girl at the saloon in the shape of the religiously uptight Annelle, while the bickering Ouiser and Clairee continually argue in the background. Everything is happy until Shelby decides to have a baby despite the risks that her condition pose needless to ay M'Lynn is nothing but disapproving and concerned.
I always struggle to write a review when I dip into a genre that I'm really not fond of I know that my criticisms could be unfair because it could be brilliant but be lost on me. I only watched this film because I read a commentary on Julia Roberts where it noted that she had made it to be a massive star but had a questionable collection of films behind her, without the quality you would expect from her specifically it mentioned Steel Magnolias so I thought I'd give it a stab to see if that was a fair dig or just a comment by someone who doesn't like the genre anyway. Needless to say that fans of heavily sentimental weepies will be pleased with this star studded affair that never misses a chance to squeeze a laugh or a tear out of you, even if it has to do it with the most forced of devices. The plot can be seen coming a mile off and it never once tries to do anything out of the ordinary. I won't spoil the film but suffice to say that it has fights, making up, love worries, births, death, laughs and tears all in the mix. None of it really engaged me because I felt it was going through the motions but, like I said, if this is your type of thing then by all means.
The characters are also pretty by the numbers female friends including the bickering ones, the serious one, the hopeful one, the uptight one etc; they are acted well enough but that is basically what they come down to and none of the cast can do enough to make them more than that. Despite this, the cast are pretty good even if they really pander to the material and tone of the film. Roberts made her name in the film with a fairly par for the course performance that is matched by Sally Field just pushing all the emotional buttons at the right times. I didn't like Hannah or her character but Parton is better albeit she just does the same gutsy Texan broad she always does. Dukakis and MacLaine are both enjoyable enough with plenty of amusing lines to reduce the sap. The male actors are all put to one side for the vast majority of the film but support is good from Skerritt, McDermott and Shepard.
Overall I didn't like this film and can understand why the TV networks have taken to running it in the middle of the afternoon, because it fits perfectly with the unimaginative weepies and melodramas that fill those slots. The all star cast do well enough and make it a bit more interesting but generally the material is just too bland and unoriginal and the film relies less on this and more on emotional music, weepy acting and easy action to draw emotions out of the audience by force. I know this stuff has an audience but Steel Magnolias just proved to me that I'm not part of it.