THE PRINCE OF TIDES (1991)

Nick Nolte is a fully grown man who still talks to the horrible and abusive family that he grew up with. (Hint: he should have dumped them completely 35 years ago.) So now, because he’s still wrapped up with these human life-anchors, he must go to New York City to talk to his sister’s psychiatrist (Barbara Streisand) instead of spending time with his own wife and three daughters. Once in NYC, Nolte is a grumpy bear (Grrrrr!) but eventually realizes that instead of bumping heads with the doctor, he should be bumping uglies! Ahhh, yes, the old Hollywood movie logic of cheating on your wife to fix your problems routine.

As far as early 1990’s American dramas go, THE PRINCE OF TIDES is alright. I think it might even be a good example of “Oscar bait”. I’m not 100% sure about this since I don’t have any friends who like movies (or for that matter even know what the medium is since I still live on Io and time-blog back to 21st Century Earth from 3955), but I’ve heard the term in historical Earth documents and find it interesting. And it was successful as Oscar bait because TPOT did receive 7 nominations. Even one for Best Picture! What the hell? Wisely though, THE PRINCE OF TIDES got crushed at the 64th Academy Awards by the far superior THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS.

Okay pace, lots of Nick Nolte’s voice, zero nudity, some cool NYC locations, Nick Nolte mowing an entire football field with a push lawnmower, IT CAME FROM BENEATH THE SEA (1955) on TV, a hardback copy of Stephen King’s “The Tommyknockers” moving on its own, a lackluster ending that really didn’t seem like his life had changed much at all from the beginning of the movie (you know, besides cheating on his wife), cleaning up the room by moving the Chinese food leftovers from the table to a bar and then leaving the room, okay photography, mid-level direction, no real emotional ups or downs, movie posters for THE FRESHMAN (1990) and FLATLINERS (1990), a dude that seems to be too small for football trying out for a football team.

As far as entertainment for THE PRINCE OF TIDES is still watchable. I doubt it will change your life or anything, but it's an okay lazy afternoon time-waster. I gotta few solid chuckles out of it.

BEACHES (1988)

BEACHES, from 1988, doesn’t even try to hide the fact that it’s a tearjerker. Right from literally the very first scene we see that singer C.C. Bloom (Bette Midler) is popular because she’s doing a soundcheck at the famous Hollywood Bowl (seating capacity: 17,500) when she gets a note informing her that her childhood friend Hillary (Barbara Hershey) is all fucked up and about to evolve into a skeleton. She splits the joint and drives all night to be with her friend. During this drive she thinks back on her lifelong friendship with the boring Hillary.

They met on a beach as kids and became pen pals. C.C. was raised by a demanding stage mother and Hillary lived in some lame silver spoon world. Yadda, yadda, yadda, they grow up and get an apartment in New York City. C.C. becomes a Broadway star and Hillary marries some rich douche who cheats on her. Blah, blah, blah, they have all kinds of ups and downs and through it all C.C. is the only one that is interesting while Hillary remains boring for her entire life. Eventually the long-awaited sad scenes show up…and they’re not sad at all.

When I sat my incredibly chiseled buns down to watch BEACHES I honestly thought it was going to be for the first time, but as I was watching it, it really felt like I had seen it before. So, either I had or the script was so goddamn predictable that I just felt like I had experienced it before. Either way, BEACHES is an okay film. I’d probably give it a 6 / 10. Mainly based off Bette Milder’s performance. She was great and a real joy to watch. All the scenes without her though are snoozers. Fun vintage clothing, totally predictable story, uneven editing that I found distracting, average acting by everybody except Bette, emotional scenes that fall flat, a few outdoor NYC street scenes that look like they might really just be a set, boring camerawork, multiple bars/clubs with the same pinkish-purple lighting, unsympathetic character (Hillary) that we’re supposed to be crying over but yet she never seemed to be a good friend to C.C. ever. She should have stopped hanging out with her 20 years ago! Also, maybe I'm a big dummy, but I could never figure out the level of C.C.'s fame.

There was a rumor (created by me in about 3 seconds) that there was a script for a BEACHES 2, written in 1990, where Hillary’s young daughter, Victoria, who was adopted by C.C., grows up and becomes addicted to opioids and joins a Manson-like 2.0 cult that preys on social media influencers. Sadly, the script was never picked up for production due to legal threats by the powerful Ed Wood estate dealing with a subplot about a cross-dressing assassin that appeared to be borrowed from Wood’s 1965 novel “Killer in Drag”. There was also the problem that audiences would have had no idea what the fuck social media influencers were back in 1990.