Melvin and Howard | Jason Robards, Paul Le Mat | Great cult classic!!! Hint,seek out the OOP...

Melvin and Howard | Jason Robards, Paul Le Mat | a fun movie that may just be true

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Melvin and Howard

	Melvin and Howard Jason Robards, Paul Le Mat Universal Studios, 2004 average customer review:based on 19 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Nevada milkman melvin dummar helps a bum and winds up in howard hughes will. Best supporting oscar for mary steenburgen. Studio: Uni Dist Corp. (mca) Release Date: 03/02/2004 Starring: Paul Le Mat John Glover Run time: 95 minutes Rating: R Director: Jonathan Demme

Great cult classic!!! Hint,seek out the OOP Anchor Bay version,read on!!!

Like I said,seek out the out of print Anchor Bay version of this movie on DVD!!! It includes a very entertaining audio commentary NOT on the more common Universal DVD,it might be more expensive but it's well worth it for the insightful commentary by Jonathan Demme & production designer Toby Rafelson,it's chock-full interesting tidbits!!! Great cult classic from the 80's from director Jonathan Demme (The Silence Of The Lambs)and great acting from Paul LeMat(American Graffiti,Aloha,Bobby & Rose),Jason Robards(The Paper),Jack Kehoe(Serpico,The Paper),Michael J. Pollard(Bonnie & Clyde), and of course Mary Steenburgen (former wife of Malcolm McDowell and now Mrs. Ted Danson),who won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her role!!! Also won a statue for Best Original Screenplay!!! A true cult classic!!! two thumbs up!!! way up!!! five stars!!! A+

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a fun movie that may just be true

for as long as this movie has been out it wasn't till just this past weekend that i watched it for the first time. what a treat! as a boy i grew up in willard, utah, and was familiar with who melvin dummar was long before the howard hughes will incident took place. so it was extra fun for me to watch the segment of the movie that was filmed at the actual gas station that dummar operated back in the 70s. my dad operated a fruit stand just down the highway from there for a bunch of years till the property owner decided to build a house on the property and we relocated the stand. the old gas station is still there today, though no longer in business, on the old highway 89 that passes through willard. but being from that area i did notice a couple of trivial errors. when the willard sequence begins it gives the impression that the body of water you see in the background is the great salt lake. it isn't. actually that is willard bay you can see. the salt lake is several miles beyond on the other side of a big rock dike built in the 60s. but that's okay, no big deal. the other descrepency was when melvin went to salt lake city to drop the will off at the lds church headquarters the movie referred to temple square as "mormon square". no harm done really and none of that detracted from my enjoyment. so if you'd like to spend a little time with a fun movie i highly recommend this one. sure, the hughes will was thrown out by the courts, but that doesn't mean it was a fake, just that with all that fortune at stake that there were those with a motive to discredit anything that came along. maybe melvin dummar was robbed by the system. who can say for sure. and as for melvin i am unsure what became of him as his family moved from willard after the movie was made and i myself have moved away as well, though my parents still live there and i visit from time to time.

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A Minor Classic Still Delivers The Riches Of Howard Hughes' Fortune

I recently picked up a copy of "Melvin and Howard," a picture that I remembered fondly from many years ago--to be pleasantly rewarded once again by its subtle, yet unmistakable charms. Even though this movie was warmly regarded upon it's release, it's not a film I would characterize as ever having been immensely popular. Despite being directed by Jonathan Demme, who went on to many great films including "Silence of the Lambs," and despite Oscars for Mary Steenburgen and its screenplay--it's a film I feel has been largely forgotten.

It's unfortunate, because I think "Melvin and Howard" is a terrific film based on a fascinating true life incident. It has a real indie sensibility about it, a smallness, an attention to slice-of-life drama, a richness in detail. Today, I really don't believe this would have been a studio film. For such a BIG story, this is a little (but rich) comedy.

Essentially, the plot follows the adventures of Melvin Dummar--a small town loser. Melvin claims to have once given a ride to billionaire Howard Hughes and upon Hughes' death claimed to have a will naming him heir to the Hughes' fortune. Of course, this becomes scrutinized and debated. Is the story true? Are the papers valid? And although these events are based on fact, the films plays out as a smart satire on the nature of greed and asks us to determine what qualities in life make us the richest.

Paul Le Mat, an interesting actor, has his best role here as Melvin. Jason Robards plays, very briefly, as the man who may or may not be Hughes (a few minutes was enough to garner him an Oscar nomination). And Mary Steenburgen is a riot as Melvin's first wife. She swept most of the major awards that year, hers is a deft comedic performance reminiscent of a young Jean Arthur. This is a MUST for her fans.

There's a lot of joy to be had in this small picture, and I definitely want to recommend it. It's a sophisticated telling, as well. It never purports to advance what is true or not--and that'll leave you with a smile and some good discussion points when the film ends. KGHarris, 10/06.

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Oddly-structured film, but still fascinating

I was a little disappointed by this one. The premise, execution, and cast are all top notch. But Bo Goldman's script is what threw me, despite all the acclaim. For me, too much happens too late. Act II dwells too much on Melvin-as-loser. Again and again we see him chase the American Dream. The trouble is, ten minutes into the film I could tell he would never get it. So after a while all the attempts became tedious.

When Melvin does find the "will," the movie is almost over, and very little screen time actually is spent dealing with how the discovery changes him. We get the expected deluge of reporters, crazies, and marriage proposals, but this part isn't developed and proceeds along pretty expected lines. Exploring this more--maybe it tears apart his relationships with his women, with his kids--would have made a richer film, I think, than watching endless breakups and get-togethers with his wife when he was poor. And I just didn't find his relationship with his flaky wife or his trailer-trash life to be that compelling. A second relationship (with a very young and very beautiful Pamela Reed) also didn't get developed as well as I'd hoped. Just when the film was getting up some steam...it ended.

The first half of Melvin and Howard is very enjoyable, however, with Demme's scrappy style complementing the material well. It's a small, quirky film with an unusual but very American premise (you could argue it embodies the true American Dream, the one we really don't talk much about); it's the type of film that rarely gets made anymore because Hollywood only has the machinery in place today to make $100 million dollar digital effects extravaganzas with all the soul of a computer game, since that is usually what they're marketed after. So it's more the pity that I can't get as excited about this very unique and very personal film as I wanted to.

The transfer to DVD is excellent. (I've read reviews elsewhere that said the transfer was from a very bad print. Perhaps they are reviews of an earlier DVD edition, because the one I saw looked flawless.) The anamorphic trailer is a hoot. Recommended for a nice rainy weekend, but not quite "essential."

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4

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