A waste of 90 minutes of my life

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

This is a strange movie and another spicy relationship from Kleiser coming back from Santorin. Usually, Smalltown, USA is almost paradise and this one says the opposite : it's a pit, faraway of modern life and hard for professional life or romances as every one knows every body ! That was indeed my feeling in my own hometown before leaving for the big city… The movie takes a long time to get settled (while it's only 100 minutes), but it's worth staying because this coming of age story (a theme that has always resonates in me) is about a grad teen having a crush for Jamie Lee ! Sure her occupation is crazy (manager of stunt cars) but in her cowboy clothes or in the teen fantasies as a rock star, she is totally stunning and thus i was really connected with what's happening between them. Swayze was solid as a poor hick unable to save his weeding while Jenny was a big disappointment : she thus plays her unfaithful wife but like the future Tralala from Red Hook, she is too much into teasing and nothing else… As this small town is near Chicago, we have also as bonus, the locals siblings from the area, maybe in their 1st appearance as both sister and brother are still young !

This is a troubling movie to review. It's neither not good. More good pass the time movie fare in the world of ordinary, although you do get caught up in the characters and their hardships, problems, aspirations, mistakes, etc. It's well acted by all, and if you're a C Thomas Howell fan, like me, it's a plus, although like Soul Man, here, I didn't buy that Oceanography was his passion, a similar study to what the late Paul Walker did, him choosing marine biology. Anyhow, he gets caught up in an affair with an older woman, the always capable and talented Jamie Lee Curtis. Her best friend and ex lover (the late Swayze) a car derby driver who revels in his profession, is now going out with a trashy, but delicious looking sort (Jennifer Jason Leigh, in one of the film's standout and memorable performances) who's doing others, besides him. It is fun watching Swayze, get angry and go ballistic, and just watch what happens, when provoked. The film has an average script, and less so plot, but one feels the movie is not built around that. It only has video appeal. It'd bomb at the cinema. If you disregard that, and just live through the characters here, you'll come off okay, while a plus, is being a Christopher Howell fan. Another asset is two dream sequences, one featuring Howell in a choreographed dancing number in front of a locomotive, surrounding by an entourage of beauties and studs, where the prize inside the carriage is Jamie Lee Curtis who I myself, has never found this horror icon, attractive. Also an intimate lovemaking scene, on the derby ground, between the more mature Curtis and younger gent, Howell, in a brake locked car, which executes a perfect donut. An enjoyable time passer with memorable moments, and characters, but don't look higher than that. Here too, before Soul Man, Howell takes one in the gulliver.

During field tests with a local corn seed supplier I had to work on site and the work was based out of Pontiac, IL. People didn't revel in their small town status. They hated it and left as soon as they could, if they could. It was horrible. Everything. Try getting a decent meal out when the locals are actually afraid of spices. Not, "I prefer blander food" or such, but true horror at the thought that they might accidentally get slipped something cooked with the appropriate spices. I don't mean hot, I mean anything other than salt and pepper. And pepper's considered pretty darn exotic.Jamie Lee used to show up at the bar I used to frequent after work, during the shoot. That didn't even make it interesting. In fact, she was a bloody nuisance. Real attention seeker. First time I saw her I'd been in there about 10 minutes and a roadie walked in and she flashed her breasts at him and said, "How do you like these sets?"I suppose the movie does capture the grinding nothingness of it all. I found the plot insipid and the acting pretty bad. Patrick Swayze was just irritating. Surely you have something better to do than to watch this movie. I guess those that rated it highly are engaging in a kind of rationalization. Trapped in someplace like Fairbury, IL they convince themselves that they love small town Americana. Maybe they're afraid to leave. I mean, if spices scare you, the world might seem pretty terrifying. I guarantee it won't intrude on you in central Illinois!

I lived near Pontiac IL for 12 years and after seeing the movie and recognizing places I went when I was growing up it was special.One question though if anyone knows Was the main house in the movie the funeral home in town? My brothers and I have wondered that for a long time. If anyone has an answer to that email me at [email protected], also does anyone know if any scenes were done in Saunemin IL. thats where I lived and went to school thru 7th grade, my parents worked in Pontiac at the chair factory, then my mom worked at the hospital and my dad worked at the prison.We always thought that the track was near Fairbury but I guess not is there any place where this movie can be rented I have check Block Buster and they don't have it i think its one of those hard to find movies. thanks a bunch Dolores Ogden