Word: horseman
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...screen fills with hundreds of colored shapes spinning like a crayola volcano dancing the twist. The Electric Horseman, starring Robert Redford and Jane Fonda, is not scheduled to start for ten minutes yet the balding accountant three seats down already has his right hand in bucket of popcorn; his other inching up his wife's sweater, his eyes aimed at the screen. The color pattern repeats itself on the black screen, revolving twice with a one and a half twist like a lasarium with hiccups. Everyone in the theater, not just the accountant, watches the screen as if something were...
Ironically, almost anyone who runs to see Being There or Electric Horseman suffers from the video/slick malaise that both these films attempt to ridicule: the need to replace people with images. Both films finger TV as the villain behind a plot to steer Americans toward artificial lives, to keep them from the wonder of natural beauty. Unfortunately, each film exaggerates TV's ill-effects to hammer home its message...
...scriptwriting that sustains Being There is missing from Electric Horseman. Willy Nelson, the singer, has the best line in Electric Horseman. Sunning in a cafe near Caesar's Palace he plans to get "a bottle of tequilla and keno girl who can suck the chrome off a trailer hitch." Nelson wrote that himself and the slick script of this Hollywood romance rarely matches the rugged quality of his improvisation. Indeed the film suffers from the same slickness and image-mongering that it purports to criticize...
...ELECTRIC HORSEMAN Directed by Sydney Pollack Screenplay by Robert Garland...
...obvious both stars saw this film as a vehicle to advocate causes they care about, but they are good-natured about it. Writer Garland and Director Pollack had the sense to give Horseman the tone of a pop fable; they stress entertainment over preachment. A romantic intensity that Fonda and Redford might have generated is lost as a result; there could have been more electricity between the electric horseman and his lady. And Willie Nelson, the great country singer, is wasted in his first acting role. Still, there is not a more cheerful or engaging movie around these days...