Synopsis
Summer, 1984: 30 years after Duane captained the high school football team and Jacy was homecoming queen, this Texas town near Wichita Falls prepares for its centennial. Oil prices are down, banks are failing, and Duane's $12 million in debt. His wife Karla drinks too much, his children are always in trouble, and he tom-cats around with the wives of friends. Jacy's back in town, after a mildly successful acting career, life in Italy, and the death of her son. Folks assume Duane and Jacy will resume their high school romance. And Sonny is "tired in his mind," causing worries for his safety. Can these friends find equilibrium in middle age?
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Cast
- Jeff BridgesDuane Jackson
- Cybill ShepherdJacy Farrow
- Annie PottsKarla Jackson
- Randy QuaidLester Marlow
- Cloris LeachmanRuth Popper
- Timothy BottomsSonny Crawford
- William McNamaraDickie Jackson
- Eileen BrennanGenevieve Morgan
- Angie BollingMarylou Marlow
- Meri Beth MooreT.V. News Anchor
Recommendations
- 88
Chicago Sun-Times
The town seems to be as preoccupied as ever with its own personalities and memories, as if it were sitting for its portrait. - 63
Chicago Reader
Although the film is built around the town's big centennial celebration, there are no big dramatic events in the usual sense; the film's focus is the complications, readjustments, and discoveries of middle age, and it's entirely to the credit of old movie buff Bogdanovich, who wrote the script, that there isn't a single film reference in sight. - 60
The New York Times
There are times when Texasville, like the Larry McMurtry novel on which it is based, seems top heavy with eccentrics. Everybody is tirelessly and (worse) lovably oddball. The snappy dialogue occasionally exhausts. Yet also like the book, the movie becomes seriously involving, a cockeyed acknowledgment of an especially American kind of inarticulate despair. - 60
Time Out
Sentimentality intrudes as Bogdanovich, determined to introduce a hymn to the healing power of friendship, loses the courage of his comic convictions. It all looks good, though, and the actors - epecially Bridges and Potts - are clearly having a ball. - 60
TV Guide Magazine
As movies go, it's far from perfect, but it's always human. - 60
Empire
An amazing exercise in character development which successfully shows the character as they were in the first film and as they are now. It is flawed in the basics, but often delightful in detail. - 40
Los Angeles Times
Like Sonny’s moving pictures in his mind, Bogdanovich sees things we can’t; when we can join him--in moments of family and connectedness--Texasville is touching. Most other times it’s the darndest mess you ever saw. - 40
Variety
Peter Bogdanovich's sequel to The Last Picture Show is long on folksy humor and short on plot. In adapting Larry McMurtry's 1987 follow-up novel (predecessor was penned in 1965, filmed in 1971), Bogdanovich uses an impending county centennial celebration as the weak spine for this slice of small-town Texas life.
