Terms of Endearment

1983, James L. Brooks

*as recommended by Sexy Celebrity*
So... I've been kind of putting this review off mainly because I knew it wasn't going to be pretty, and I didn't want to hurt Sexy's feelings. I know that kind of defeats the purpose of the Trade-off, but I like Sexy and don't want to be a jerk, but I just really disliked this movie.

This movie is just like a certain ex boyfriend of mine - really depressing in a bad way. There is just so much that happens, and none of it good. Confusing relationships that turn friendly, then sexual, then confusing, a love/hate mother daughter relationship which I still don't think I really understand, infidelity, stale and strained married/family life, growing old, dying young... no wonder this movie won so many awards.

The people in this film were awful. I don't mean the actors themselves, I really like Shirley Maclain, actually. I mean the characters. And I don't mean they are awful, as in, they are horrible people and I don't want to watch a movie that has horrible people in it. I don't give a **** about that, even though that seems to be a lot of people's problem with this movie (according to reviews on the internet). It's just that the characters are badly written. They aren't even cliched - they're, like, inconsistent, like the writer couldn't make up his mind what he wanted them to be like, or they just wanted them all to be super quirky, but they went over-the-top and they're just kind of bonkers. Do people like this really exist? A lot of them? I sincerely want to know. It sort of reminded me of that one episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer in season 4, when Faith and Buffy switch bodies.

So, in conclusion-

"A person's energy has a flow, a unity. Buffy's was fragmented. It grated like something forced in where it doesn't belong." <--pretty much every character in Terms of Endearment