Dancer, Texas . Newcity Chicago . 05-03-98

Dancer, Texas

DIRECTED BY: Tim McCanlies

REVIEWED: 05-03-98

Four boys of varying degrees of cuteness constitute four-fifths of a high school graduating class. They spend the weekend after commencement deciding whether to stick around their tiny West Texas town or stick to a boyhood vow and move out to L.A. together. There's Tom Cruisey Terrel Lee, whose glitzy mother insists that he follow Daddy into the oil business; Squirrel, the goof, whose matted hair and concession to his friends' loving ridicule is explained by his tragic homelife; John, my favorite, the lean lone-rancher's son who sits by the fireside whittling wood in a cowboy hat without looking cartoonish; and Keller, who, by virtue of not having any particular quirk, makes him the thoughtful audience stand-in and the most anxious to leave town. As the townsmen place bets on who's got the balls to go, I start staking odds of my own, alarmed by the speed at which the soundtrack of slide guitar and sassy harmonica degenerate into the forced poignancy of the fiddle. I pegged Squirrel for the one to die young, but this isn't that kind of film. Nor is it a whinefest, though when we first meet the foursome, they look for all the world like slackers, sitting in rickety lawnchairs across a beauteous swath of Texas highway and sky. As simple and sentimental as any movie about leaving home is bound to be, you could actually figure it for one Texan's response to "Slacker," where everything was levelled to stupid-importance and worthy of comment. Here are young people trying hard to cut away the minutiae, to gauge just how strongly the important things-friends, families, jobs-can keep them tied to a specific place or urge them to go. When the boys feel suffocated by the the town's casseroles, they go like masters to the open country. When they feel awed, they come home and are touched by people's affection. Is there a happy medium between claustrophobia and agoraphobia? A good number between 81 and 13 million? With Patricia Wettig and Breckin Meyer (fondly recalled as the stoner from "Clueless").

--Ellen Fox

Capsule Reviews
Dancer, Texas
Dancer, Texas

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