Terms of Endearment (1983)
Directed by James L. Brooks
Aurora, a finicky woman, is in search of true love while her daughter faces marital issues. Together, they help each other deal with problems and find reasons to live a joyful life.
17 connections found
View:
17 connections, in both directions
What critics compared Terms of Endearment to
Having been produced by filmmaker, James L. Brooks ( Terms Of Endearment , As Good as It Gets ), it’s no surprise that The Edge Of Seventeen has that classic clutch movie quality.
She sent it off to iconic producer James L. Brooks ( Terms of Endearment , Broadcast News , Jerry Maguire ) and hoped it get really, really lucky.
Craig working alongside producer James L. Brooks feels like a marvel: the man responsible for Terms of Endearment and Broadcast News brings a gravitas often lacking from teen fare (at least, lacking since the days of John Hughes), and Craig brings a fresh and singular perspective.
This is the man who directed such films as Terms of Endearment, Broadcast News, and As Good as It Gets, produced Cameron Crowe’s Say Anything and Jerry McGuire and created or produced TV classics including The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Taxi and The Simpsons .
As a filmmaker himself, Brooks has made movies like “Broadcast News” and “Terms of Endearment” that perfectly balance comedy and drama, big laughs and emotional honesty.
It’s reminiscent of James L. Brooks, the man behind “Broadcast News” and “Terms of Endearment,” who writes flawed characters with love and understanding.
Hawn, in theory at least, is supposed to be playing one of those cranky maternal comic nightmares, like Shirley MacLaine in “Terms of Endearment” or “Postcards from the Edge” or — to tie it to the franchise era of Mother’s-Day-weekend-as-marketing concept — Jane Fonda in “Monster-in-Law.”
A quarter of a century after "Terms of Endearment," she's old enough to play the formidable mother now, instead of the difficult daughter, and her parent here is a complicated and dangerous character, so utterly closed off and controlled that when her anger comes, it's an explosion.
Along the way, we slowly gather insights into the characters - the fraught relationship between Kym and her father (Bill Irwin), and, especially, Kym and her mother (Debra Winger, who's retained a thing or two about withholding moms from "Terms of Endearment").
But rather than present a more realistic side of life and love, Sparks, who still dresses his stories in the same saccharine garments as the more conventional tales they resemble, has elevated a reclusive genre that can only be dubbed “tragedy porn,” popularized by such films as Love Story, Terms of Endearment and Beaches—a perverted simile every bit as unrealistic and twice as cruel.
Advertisement
…the Oscar-winner “Terms of Endearment” won’t be as well-regarded in 30 years as the trashy films it overshadowed…
He’s the son of Ivan Reitman (“Ghostbusters”), but his DNA is closer to James L. Brooks, the master of comic tearjerkers such as “Broadcast News” and “Terms of Endearment.”
In fact, "Bottle Rocket" began as a college-made short that showed at Sundance and found its way to "Terms of Endearment" director James L. Brooks, who took its student creators under his wing and helped finance a full-length film.
And yet we can sense that the bond between them is as durable as the one between Emma and Aurora in Terms of Endearment , the last mother-daughter film that left as deep an impression as this film.
Advertisement
But they tend to be thought of as being for women — like Terms of Endearment, Titantic, The Notebook, The Fault In Our Stars, films that created instant sisterhoods of shared Kleenex packets in the dark of theaters around the world.
It avoids the cloying, artificial sentimentality of a Terms of Endearment.