# Nobody's Fool (1994)

### reviewed by
Jason Overbeck

    NOBODY'S FOOL
    **** OF **** grade is A-

Nobody's Fool is an excellent character piece that starts great and just keeps getting better. It also contains a great Academy Award nominated performance by Paul Newman, as a aged constuction worker witha bum knee and very limited prospects. He lives with his eighth grade teacher (Tandy is her final role) and has been ducked away from responsibility.

I use the word "ducked" because he is finaly trying to make amends for his past failing as a parent. For a man who ducked responsibility he seems to have all the weight on his shoulders, and that is killing his knee. With all his responsibility he finds time to feud with Bruce Willis (over a snowblower and money that Willis might owe him) and flirt with Willis' wife Melanie Griffith, whom flirts right back.

Most of the best scenes are very quiet, carefull wording of sentences or responses to actions. I meantione Newman, because he is grand for this role, but every other actor seems to do a wonderful job, including some I haven't seen for a while. There are wonderful moments between Newman and his grandson and Newman and Walsh (his son). Walsh resents Newman for leaving him when he was young, and Newman (too proud to flat out apologize) tries to start fresh being a grandfather, that does grandfatherly things.

I also liked Pruitt Taylor Vince as Newman's slow constuction partner, and best friend. It is nice to see them onscreen, the way they compliment each other. The understanding that Vince looks at Newman as something of a father figure and Newman humor him as he talks, yet beneath the surface there is an understanding that we gain about the nature of their friendship.

I realize I am talking about Newman and the subtle relationships with him. That is this film, I don'tknow where else I could point without it leading back to Newman. So why let old habits die hard.

Of all the relationships, Newman with Melanie Griffith is the best. They flirt with innuendo after innuendo and talk about where they would go if they were free. There is a great scene where Newman and Griffith talk about Willis' former sercretary. He issues a subtle dare, "When Ruby was here she used to wear a see through top, so you might want to keep up with her." She responds by lifting up her sweater and flashing him. Game, set and match. By the way, Newman's reaction to this is ALONE worth the price of a rental.

The review above was posted to the rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due to ASCII to HTML conversion.

Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews