The rare screen sequel that doesn't announce the fact in its title. Keeping the name of the Larry McMurtry novel on which it is based, it brings back the highly colored characters of Terms of Endearment, plus some new ones (or just grown-up ones), and submits them to the crayon box of writer-director Robert Harling, best known as only the writer on Steel Magnolias. Not much of the color is visible to the naked eye: the soft-focus image tends toward pallor. Still, the gaudy clash of eccentric comedy and sadistic heart-tugging should win quick recognition and easy acceptance from fans of the earlier installment. (There are three deaths this time -- not counting the off-screen one of Ben Johnson, noted at movie's end -- and the last one descends to a very dark shade of dirty trick.) The fast-and-loose plotting, which gets faster and looser as it goes along, covers enough ground to provide some effective demonstrations of the capacity of ruptured relationships to mend themselves. Miranda Richardson and Marion Ross make sizable contributions, Jack Nicholson just a small one, and Shirley MacLaine responds to these three and all others as if she is bidding against them at auction. Juliette Lewis, Bill Paxton, George Newbern, Scott Wolf. (1996) — Duncan Shepherd
This movie is not currently in theaters.