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 | Ron Shelton's second directorial effort (after "Bull Durham") falls a little flat. You might be tempted to say that he should stick to sports films--which does seem to be his forte. But I suspect the real problem with this film was that it was based on a memoir and was not one of Shelton's original scripts. The memoir, of course, was that of legendary exotic dancer, Blaze Starr, and she not only provided the source material but served as consultant on the film and even had a cameo. Her influence may not have been all that felicitous, however. The hurried exposition scenes (young Blaze, nee Belle, bidding her central casting hillbilly family goodbye as she boards a bus, being introduced to the world of exotic dancing by an unscrupulous promoter played by Robert Wuhl) just don't ring true. Belle/Blaze can't have been SO naive as to think that she was being hired to sing in a strip club. And the scene where she and Wuhl cook up her stage name is almost painful in its cuteness. The movie stumbles badly in its introductory scenes. It is not the fault of Lolita Davidovich, who is quite fetching in the title role, and the film does get better once Paul Newman makes his entrance as the irascible, eccentric governor of Louisiana, Earl K. Long, brother of Huey and therefore heir to a colorful tradition of populist backwoods-backroom politicking. Newman delights in the role, and the chemistry beteen him and Davidovich is genuine. It ratchets the film up a notch or two. But it still never quite catches fire. It may be that by 1989, we had already seen this type of cornpone politics on film a few too many times. Was the real Earl K. Long as much of a progressive on the integration and voting rights issue as the film implies. Well, this Yankee won't presume to know for sure, but within the context of the film, Long's progressivism comes off as a little cliched. He's clearly a rascal, but he's supposed to be redeemed somewhat in the audience's eyes since he's on the right side of the race issue. But frankly it would be a little more interesting, if he were just a little more conflicted about the racial politics of his home state. As for the Blaze Starr character, well, as implied above, her character could be, uh, fleshed out more as well. She has been elsewhere described as a "stripper with a heart of gold," and that may well have been the case, but surely, the country gal who started out wanting to be a singer must have been more conflicted about her career path than this film ever suggests. The only sense we get of that inner conflict, however, is her reluctance to tell her backwoods mama what she really does for a living (of course, Mama's not quite as naive and isolated as Blaze thinks: she even keeps a scrapbook of her daughter's exploits). A more nuanced portrait might have upset the real-life Starr, however, and maybe she wouldn't have served as consultant to writer/director Shelton. Hmmm. Maybe that would have been a good thing. |
