Search - Thelma and Louise on DVD

More than an exercise in male-bashing

Dennis Littrell | SoCal | 06/08/2002

(4 out of 5 stars)

"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."

MGM ... God Bless You!

Tom | Warrington, United Kingdom | 11/17/2002

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Before I say anything else: Thelma & Louise is not a male bashing, anti feminist film. If you see it as that you are sadly identifying with the wrong characters! It's a thrilling tale full of life affirming energy and the two leads each deserved twenty Oscars each! On a par with Toys as my favourite film ... and I'm male! This is an alternatively powerful, harrowing and hilarious slice of 90's cinema that ranks among one of the best films ever made.MGM released Thelma & Louise early in 2001, for a fairly early disc, it carried a strong line up of special features, which happily have found their way on to this SE re-release. The original release had a damn shoddy print quality, as MPEG encoders had still not quite been perfected yet, and the Dolby Digital 5.1 was all over the place!Not now! The film has been stunningly remastered into anamorphic widescreen, and looks like it could have been made six months ago. The soundtrack also benefits extensively from a good cleaning up, still remaining in the standard 5.1, it has an enormous presence now. It is quite incredible that MGM have managed to house a 2 hour film plus well over two hours of extras on a single 9GB disc ... The most rewarding extra feature on the disc is the new hour long retrospective made in 2000. It features almost all of the principle cast and behind the scenes characters, and is cleverly broken down into five sections: Conception, Casting, Production, Reaction, and the final section is devoted to the cast and crew looking back on one of the most brilliant pieces of cinema ever to grace the world, all looking understandably pleased to have been involved. Elsewhere, you can enjoy two audio commentaries, one featuring director Ridley Scott (very rewarding and a good deal of technical information and insights into how difficult it was to get a ground breaking film like this made) and a second featuring Susan Sarrandon, Geena Davies and screenwriter Callie Khouri. This is a more chatty and funny track, but Khouri keeps the two witty cast engaged in conversation relevant to the film, not stopping a few hilarious outbursts along the way. The deleted scenes are very interesting to watch, and it is (for a majority of them) a good thing these were cut, they wouldn't really add anything. A more controversial extra is the much hyped alternate ending. Extended is really a better word, showing T&L's '66 Thunderbird falling at an awkward angle over the cliff, somehow ruining the whole effect that the two girls had just launched themselves into freedom. The are also some very good storyboard sequences, startingly similar to the actual shots in the film and a collection of theatrical trailers and home video previews. Please avoid the music video however, it is shocking 80's cheese and disturbing to think it was only 12 years ago!All in all, MGM has done a fantastic job and put a lot of thought into creating this Special Edition, and if you already own the 2001 version, for God's sake go buy it anyway!"

A cult classic -- not just for feminists.

Themis-Athena | from somewhere between California and Germany | 07/18/2001

(5 out of 5 stars)

""BOOM!!" Under fire from Thelma and Louise's guns, the tongue-wagging truck-driver's pride and joy (and extension of his manhood) goes up in flames. Incredulous, its owner stares at the spectacle and lets off a pitifully helpless and, in its helplessness, hilariously comical tirade against the two female outlaws; whose only reason not to shoot him, too, at this point is that it is so utterly more poignant to let him sit all alone by the road side in the vastness of the Southwest, robbed of all attributes of male potency and left to the pity of whoever is eventually going to pick him up and give him a ride back to civilization.

By the time of this incident, Thelma has mutated from a subdued and insecure housewife to a self-assured, fearless queen of the highway. ("Something has crossed over" in her, she tells Louise shortly before their final encounter with their truck-driving nemesis.) Louise in turn, who had taken the lead early on in their flight from the police, has overcome her intermittent bout of despair and is back to her old self, too. Now wanted not only for questioning in connection with the death of the rapist shot by Louise but also for armed robbery in another state, knowing that being questioned by the police will inevitably add a charge of murder for the incident which set off their run (and probably also knowing deep down inside that there is not going to be a happy ending to their weekend trip anyway), Thelma and Louise have stopped to care what is going to happen next. Thus emboldened, they make a last great run for it, which ultimately leads them to the vast, endlessly deep gorges of the Grand Canyon.

"Thelma and Louise" is all and none of the things as which it has been described. It is about the friendship between two women, about female independence and male sexism, but it is neither a simple "chick flick" nor a monument to feminism (although I have to admit that watching it can have an almost therapeutic effect when you've just about "had it" again with the male slightly-less-than-half of society). Most of the men that Thelma and Louise encounter are two-dimensional cartoon characters, but "Reservoir Dogs" and perpetual tough guys Harvey Keitel and Michael Madsen (of all people) are cast against stereotype. The movie also features some absolutely stunning pictures of the Southwestern scenery and mostly takes place on the road, but it is not just a "road movie" (feminist or otherwise). More than anything, this is a movie about the things that shape the way we are, and about the consequences of our actions. Had Thelma learned to use her brain before and not after their encounter with Harlan the rapist, she would have seen him for what he was and avoided him from the start. Had Louise not been raped herself, she would probably not have shot Harlan at being provoked by him, after the self-defense situation was already over. Impulse? Fate? Justifiable homicide? Hardly. Thoroughly understandable? Absolutely, at least from a woman's point of view.

It takes two extraordinary lead actresses to carry the movie's theme, and Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis are the perfect embodiment of the characters they portray. Next to them, not even Keitel and Madsen really shine (although this may be in part due to the thankless parts they play); only Brad Pitt, in the role that made him an overnight star, briefly gets to sparkle. Callie Khourie was a deserving winner of the 1991 Academy Award and Golden Globe for Best Original Screenplay, and both Sarandon and Davis would have been equally deserving of the Best Leading Actress awards. So would have Ridley Scott for Directing, Adrian Biddle for Cinematography, Thom Noble for Editing and the movie itself, for Best Drama - in a year that produced many extraordinary films, it might have been more just to split some of the awards among several contenders, and despite the strong competition ("Bugsy," "Silence of the Lambs," "Prince of Tides," "The Fisher King," "Grand Canyon" and "Fried Green Tomatoes," to name just a few), it seems sadly underrated for a movie that has long since become a cult classic to only have won one of the awards it was nominated for, both on Oscar Night and at the Golden Globes.

Also recommended:
Fried Green Tomatoes (Widescreen Collector's Edition)
Dead Man Walking
"

Outstanding script, acting, and soundtrack

Themis-Athena | 12/26/2001

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This film has so many wonderful elements, from the funny little asides ("sir, you're standing in your pizza") to the lonely, still faces of the American West that the camera captures to examine against the wild exhilaration of Thelma & Louise's journey. There's mystery, too: what really happened to Louise in Texas?? All the performances beginning with Sarandon and Davis are outstanding, producing unforgettable characters. If I'm not mistaken, this was Brad Pitt's first major picture; who can forget his encounter with Thelma's husband in the police station? There's a strong feminist theme to be sure, but at heart the film is really about freedom, free will, the nature of criminality, and restraints on human behavior (and the consequences of lifting them). This is inherently understood by the police officer played by Harvey Keitel, who is deeply concerned for the well-being of the two fugitives from justice while showing no compunction about roughing up the petty crook played by Pitt. The icing on the cake: a GREAT soundtrack (available on CD, and definitely worth buying separately!)"