Director: Jonathan Demme
Year Released: 1980
Rating: 2.0
Curious film, this one: Demme's crafted his own Johnny Appleseed in the form of low-class milkman Melvin Dummar and Dummar's fifteen minutes of fame and tried to turn it into a probing examination of what the American Dream is really about. But the hand proverbially closes on nothing: the idea to examine what the American Dream 'is' promising, but there's something unsettling in using a character like Dummar to prove this point, and there are also questions to be asked of the screenplay's execution and nihilistic conclusion: ultimately, there is precisely nothing left to strive for, because the American Dream is just that - nothing (Dummar ends up without money and takes it in stride - the only consolation prize is having a movie made about him, I guess). There are moments of happiness for him, but they are fleeting - even his wife (Mary Steenburgen) and daughter leave impulsively when he does the slightest thing wrong. The crazy (Hughes) make money, while the majority of people starve or struggle to get that new television set. If Roger Ebert was right when he said that great movies are never depressing, but bad ones always are, then this belongs in the latter category.
