Another attempt by director James Ivory and screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala to whittle down the list of "classic novels" you feel you ought to get around to some day -- in this case, two novels in one swipe. The movie is laden with bookish talk ("Listen to the locusts! I wonder where they go when summer's over!"), and the storyline, chronicling the longtime marriage of two Midwestern puritans and philistines in the 1930s, is such as to make you feel that if you have read Sinclair Lewis you might not have needed to get around to Evan Connell after all. There are some impressive scenes: Mr. and Mrs. Bridge's humiliation at an Eagle Scout inauguration when their son can't bring himself to kiss his mother like all the other sons; Mr. Bridge refusing to budge from his restaurant seat during a tornado warning and Mrs. Bridge sticking loyally but nervously beside him; Mr. Bridge presenting Mrs. Bridge with an art student's copy of one of the museum masterpieces -- so much fresher than the original -- seen on a trip to Paris. These, and a handful of others, don't disrupt the general tenor of well-bred blandness. Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward. (1990) — Duncan Shepherd
This movie is not currently in theaters.