Bus Stop
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Movie Reviews of Bus Stop
Movie Review: Performed With Gusto
Summary: 3 Stars
Marilyn Monroe was nominated for the Golden Globe award for Best Actress for this 1956 film adaptation of William Inge's play. As Cherie, she is beautiful and plays a character from some small town in Arkansas where guys started pursuing her when she was 14. From a perspective 50 years later, some of the acting seems a bit over the top, but it played well in its day.
Don Murray plays the ranch hand Bo who wants to force Cherie to marry him. Murray earned his only Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor in 1956 for the role. Today, his style seems too animated to be believable. However, he certainly performs with gusto.
The supporting cast is also excellent. Robert Bray who was in "The Caine Mutiny" plays Carl the bus driver who gives Bo a licking. Arthur O'Connell who had two Oscar nominations for "Picnic" in 1955 & "Anatomy of a Murder" in 1959 does a good job as Virgil, Bo's buddy that tries to counsel him. Betty Field plays Grace, the cafe owner with a strut out of "Annie Get Your Gun." She has appeared in "Picnic," "The Great Gatsby," & "King's Row." Eileen Heckert with her deep voice plays Cherie's friend Vera. Heckert was nominated for the supporting Oscar for "The Bad Seed" in 1956 and won in 1972 for "Butterflies Are Free." She does an excellent job of grounding the film with a sense of reality. Hope Lange puts in a brief appearance as Elma Duckworth who works at the diner. She's lovely in a small role. The following year, she would get a Best Supporting Actress nomination for "Peyton Place" and go on to win hearts in the 1960s in TV's "The Ghost & Mrs. Muir."
"Bus Stop" seems a bit dated now 50+ years later. However, it is well worth viewing to watch Marilyn Monroe and the superb supporting cast. Enjoy!
Movie Review: Monroe's best work can't stand up to the play.
Summary: 3 Stars
Marilyn Monroe gave one of her better performances in this movie. Unfortunately, the movie itself is so lacking. This is especially true when you compare it to writer William Inge's stage version. The movie has completely deleted characters that were too controversial for '50s Hollywood. However, those characters make perhaps the most profound statements on the human condition that the movie loses the richness of the play. The only real reason to see this movie is if you're a fan of Monroe's work. Otherwise, find out if there is a production of the stage play in your area. If you're only knowledge of this work comes from the movie, you're missing most of the story.Movie Review: strictly for fans of that buxom blonde
Summary: 3 Stars
william inge is not served well in this adaptation of his stage hit which comes off today as more a situation comedy than a serious work. don murray is just plain silly as the callow cowboy, but of course the only reason anybody would watch this movie nowadays is the presence of marilyn monroe, who shines in what is essentially a supporting role. not bad, just not very good.
Movie Review: Don Murray or Jom Carrey?
Summary: 3 Stars
The other reviews cover the plot pretty well so I won't say anything about that. I've never seen a movie starring Don Murray and as I watched this one, I kept thinking it was Jim Carrey on the screen because of the outrageous way both of them behave. Did anyone else sense this connection? I think Murray did a pretty nice job because he sure annoyed me!Movie Review: If you liked the play, you'll be disappointed
Summary: 2 Stars
Inge's play takes a bit of time to grow on you, but there's a lot of depth to it, and it does a good job of showing many facets of love and loneliness. The movie strips a lot of that out and ends up simplifying things to the point where it just seems hollow. Many of the same emotional peaks are in there, but without anything in the story to give them context, they end up feeling false and overdone.
I think that a film needs to be taken on its own merits, so I'll spend a little time talking just about the movie. But there's no review that says much about the play here, so I want to cover that as well.
I thought Monroe was pretty good in this. There are moments where she was brilliant (the "Old Black Magic" song is a great piece of character work); watching this gives you another chance to appreciate how smart Marilyn actually was.
I thought the actors that did Grace, Carl the bus driver, and Virgil were acceptable (Carl the most so), but Bo was far too one-note a performance. He had some great physicality for the role, which was nice, but the vocal work was grating.
Overall, the pacing of the film seemed poor, but that's somewhat normal with older movies, and I'll admit I probably was biased by knowing the play in this.
The restoration is excellent, I thought. No complaints in the quality of the image.
Basically, had I not just done the play, I probably wouldn't have watched. It was actually a bit stunning to sit through, seeing what a play that I really enjoyed had been morphed into...
The plot's the same, but the movie takes an hour to cover what a few expository sequences in the first act cover: the rodeo, why everyone's on the bus, and so on. This really strips some of the tension from the actual part of the show that takes place at the bus stop; there isn't enough time to build it up.
If you liked Will the sherrif and Dr. Lyman the professor from the play, too bad. They're completely gone. Lyman had to go for 1950s sensibilities I suppose, but taking him out makes Elma a cutout character, almost pointless. Virgil's changed; he's got a different focus, and that really dilutes his part at the end. I always felt he gave the play a "happy" ending by actually answering positively the question of whether there still was love, sacrificial love. You get echoes of that in the film, but just echoes. And you lose a lot of the humor and character of Grace and Carl with the cleaning up of their relationship. Grace becomes a skit character, channelling Mae West, and Carl ends up an amalgam of Carl and Will from the play.
In a nutshell, if you're going to be doing the play, do not watch this movie beforehand! Watch it afterwards with the cast, like I did last night. It'll be fun, but in an MST3K kind of way. Otherwise, unless you're a Marilyn Monroe fan, I'd probably skip it.