OVP: Murphy's Romance (1985)

Film: Murphy's Romance (1985)

Stars: Sally Field, James Garner, Brian Kerwin, Corey Haim

Director: Martin Ritt

Oscar History: 2 nominations (Best Actor-James Garner, Cinematography)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2024 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the women who were once crowned as "America's Sweethearts" and the careers that inspired that title (and what happened when they eventually lost it to a new generation).  This month, our focus is on Sally Field: click here to learn more about Ms. Field (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Coming off of her second Oscar, Field felt a bit of the "Best Actress Curse" when it came to her career.  She continued to get lead roles, but not hits.  Both Punchline with Tom Hanks and Surrender with Michael Caine fell flat with critics, and her only mild success was Murphy's Romance, our film today, one that got her costar an Oscar nomination, not Field herself.  By the end of the decade, Field needed a win, and she got one in one of the most unlikely of places: an ensemble film starring a group of aging women.  In 1989, this wasn't a thing that happened very often (all-female ensembles were rare at the movies, and even rarer to be big hits), but Steel Magnolias was a runaway success.  In a year with Batman and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade ushering in a new era of blockbusters, Steel Magnolias made a very sizable $83 million, putting it in similar company to The Little Mermaid and When Harry Met Sally.  Field would not win an Oscar nomination for it (in fact, that would go to her costar Julia Roberts, who was about to usurp her crown as America's Sweetheart), but it was a much-needed hit for the actress.  As I have seen Steel Magnolias before, we won't review it today, but know that that was the movie that Field had been praying for in the late 1980's.

(Spoilers Ahead) Instead we'll talk Murphy's Romance, a movie about Emma Moriarty (Field), a divorced mother trying to make ends meet on an Arizona ranch where she raises & trains horses.  She's broke, and can't get a loan given her status as an unmarried woman, but also has moxie, which catches the admiration of the local pharmacist Murphy Jones (Garner).  The two strike up a relationship, one that might be romantic despite the age difference, but it's interrupted when Emma's ex-husband Bobby Jack (Kerwin) enters the picture.  This sets up a love triangle between the respectable-but-aging Murphy, and the age appropriate-but-irresponsible Bobby Jack, one that is ended when Bobby Jack's 18-year-old girlfriend shows up with his twin sons.  As he leaves, this allows Emma & Murphy to end up together before the credits roll.

I'm not against the concept of the May/December romance onscreen (I'm not a prudish Gen Z-er who thinks that women can never reach autonomy with a man older than them), so that isn't my problem here.  My problem is more with the way that the script is written.  Field's Emma is poorly drawn, as if she's changing her entire personality from scene-to-scene.  In some moments she's an adult who understands the compromises that come with life, and in the next scene she's acting like a petulant child, willing to throw away all of her gains for no reason.  She and Garner have chemistry, but her character is so inconsistent that it's hard to care.

The film won two Oscar nominations, one for the cinematography (occasionally fun & dusty, but too inconsistent, and it reads like Oscar wanted to go back to the many farm pictures it honored in 1984), and one for Best Actor.  James Garner is not noteworthy in this movie...he's honestly not even that good.  The nomination was the only one in his career, though, and it's hard not to think of this as a career nod for an aging actor who by all accounts was a pleasure to work with (most actors who worked with him spoke highly of him, including Field who called him the best onscreen kiss of her career), but come on-in 1985, there must've been better.