Stanley & Iris (9-Feb-1990)
Director: Martin Ritt Writers: Harriet Frank, Jr.; Irving Ravetch From novel: Union Street by Pat Barker Keywords: Romantic Drama
REVIEWS Review by Avera05 (posted on 7-Apr-2005) A mild, inoffensive, gentle Sunday-school flick about two middleaged folks... he a lovable illiterate loser who falls for a winsome workingclass-wizened widow. She, played by Jane Fonda, and he, by Robert De Niro, that is. And that's where the resemblance to real life ends. And then there's the little matter of De Niro just happening to fall for a woman with absolutely NO TIME for anything but work and family responsibilities AND a supurb volunteer English-tutoring gig, apparently whipped out whenever a convenient handsome middle-class manager-in-the-rough happens by. All goes predictably well, and the romance ripens among mildly interesting side "plots", until the inevitable and expected revelation of the handsome swain's hidden mechanical (and botanical) genius. And then the burning question, at least in this viewer's mind...would she have fallen for a simple illiterate loser WITHOUT any redeeming socio-economic potential? (upsetting the most sacred law in pop AND professional sociology... woman falls in love with the security blanket FIRST and the attractive coverlet afterwards) And then again, could Robert De Niro have played such a character? And would Jane Fonda have fallen for someone like that? Probably not, but anyone who could come CLOSE to pulling it off in another theoretical film (undoubtedly eternally unmade) would interest this one viewer infinitely more.
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