Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Actress 1991

OThe Contenders:

Bette Midler: For the Boys
Laura Dern: Rambling Rose
Jodie Foster: The Silence of the Lambs (winner)
Geena Davis: Thelma & Louise
Susan Sarandon: Thelma & Louise

I Sold My Soul to the U.S.O.

Film: For the Boys
Format: Streaming video from Netflix on The Nook.

For the Boys has been sitting in my streaming queue on NetFlix for a couple of years. I can’t say I was looking forward to it, but there’s a large “eating my vegetables” component of this project and I try to knock out a couple of films I’m not particularly looking forward to every month…or week. Lots of those films end up being as difficult as I expect them to be and now and then I get a pleasant surprise of something that’s really worth seeing. For the Boys falls in the second category, at least for the majority of its running time.

This is a “takes place in flashback” movie, so we start in the film’s present. Jeff Brooks (Arye Gross) arrives at the apartment of Dixie Leonard (Bette Midler) to take her to the production of a live television broadcast. She and her former stage partner Eddie Sparks (James Caan) are being awarded with a presidential medal for their services in keeping up the morale of American troops fighting in wars overseas. But Dixie doesn’t want to go and doesn’t want to share the stage with Eddie Sparks again. When asked why, she starts to relate the story of her life and we go “doodley-doodley-doop” into the past for most of the rest of the running time.