For me James L. Brooks 1982 family comedic drama Terms of Endearment (adapted from the novel of the same name by the late Larry McMurty) may very well be one of the most underrated movies of all time. "How can this be?" you ask? The film won multiple Oscars, including Best Picture and Director. Well, I purely think the film is underrated as nobody talks about it anymore and when they do it is reduced simply to a "weepy". But this film is so funny, so brilliant and so exceptionally written. Yes, it makes you cry. But this film has so much more going for it and people seem to forget that with a really good film, those tears come from well-built characters and good writing that make you care when the tear-jerking moments do come about. This is pure film-making at its finest, in the world of drama and in the world of comedy. Shirley Maclaine and  wows us again, with their pitch-perfect presentation of Mrs Greenway and her daughter. John Lithgow and Jeff Daniels offer the most sublime supporting cast and we haven’t even mentioned Jack yet. In any other world this could be Jack’s movie. But to have a film where Jack Nicholson is at the least the third best thing in it, now that is surely saying something.

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The greatest mother and daughter film of all time can only be such with two flawless performances and Terms of Endearment has two wonderful ones. I often find myself arguing at night about who offers the better performance. Both are wickedly funny when they need to be, both offer boundless humanity and realism and both damn near tear your heart out by the final reel. I personally believe that it’s a dead heat, however ultimately the Oscar went to Maclaine, very deservedly so of course. Both Winger and Maclaine, as Aurora and Emma Greenway bring humanity and depth to characters that do enjoy moments of human over-the-top reactions to certain lines and plot points. Perhaps one of the legacies of the film was the turbulent relationship on set between Winger and Maclaine, however I think this will fade more and more to modern audiences, as watching the film you would think the two had known and loved each other their entire lives. Their familial chemistry and power of relation is really just that strong. I do also believe that after the shooting a clear sense of admiration reared from both counterparts, with Maclaine rushing to Winger at the Oscars before going to the podium and whispering to her “Half of this belongs to you”. Winger’s response; “I’ll take half”. Brooks eventually settled on Maclaine for the role of Aurora down to the simple fact that she was one of the only actresses that read and was inertested that “saw it as a comedy”. This is of course the chief reason the film works as well as it almost objectively does. 

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However the strength of the film also can be placed on the shoulders of the surrounding men in Emma and Aurora’s lives, who punctuate and play second fiddle as the two women come to terms with their own lives. The most famous of these male performances would of course be Jack Nicholson, who took home his second Oscar for his role here as retired lathario astronaut Garret Breedlove. A character not in the novel and created for the film by Brooks with Burt Reynolds actually in mind for the role. As a matter of fact Nicholson was only approached after Paul Newman and Harrison Ford turned the film down. This is an astounding fact when you really just look how perfect Nicholson is in the film and clearly was perfect for the role to begin with. However as much as Nicholson is the great standout, the film is as aforementioned filled with many further small performances. With John Lithgow, replacing an unknown other actor, filming all of his scenes on a three day break from the shooting of Footloose. Lithgow is just perfect as a counterpart to the absolute a*shole Flap Horton, played perfectly by Jeff Daniels in an early role. For as much as my description of Flap is very fitting with his adultery and general nature backing me up, again Brooks succeeds by making Flap not an unrealistically terrible villain. Flap is a very human character and adds a further complication into the tapestry of the Greenway women that we are told. I would also be remiss to not mention the astoundingly good child performances of both Huckleberry Fox and Troy Bishop, along with Shane Serwin as a younger version of Bishop’s Tommy. All three give performances that range from wonderfully cute to absolutely knockout devastating. Fox’s final nod is enough to break any viewer and certainly breaks me every time and on my most days is my go-to answer for greatest child performance in a film. 

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The humanity that pulsates through Brooks film always astounds me, for no matter how many times we take huge time-jumps we always have a sense of time and place, without the need for any intrusive and patronising title cards. The effecting performances and subtle changes in them leads to a complete lack of questioning whenever a jump does occur, no matter how many years we have leaped. Later in the film Lisa Hart Carroll’s character Patsy, Emma’s lifelong best friend comments that to a dying Emma that she’s her “touchstone”. We know how she feels for Winger’s touching, dramatic and at times blissfully hilarious performance as Emma is one where we can always touch base as the decades fly by and the children grow up and we hurtle towards a painfully inevitable conclusion that we must all face in life in some fashion or another. Although around the hour mark we do find a sort of plateau in the timeline where leaps of years don’t take place anymore, however leaps of weeks and months still do, furthering this sense of passing time without the possibility of a pause to just realise how much life has flown by. Of course it’s not just Winger, Maclaine too is subtle in her aging as the years go by, however to a lesser extent with the whole fun and joy of the character of Aurora being of course that she is a painfully stubborn woman immovable in her ways. The greatest balancing act in the film is that Brooks manages to make both Emma and Aurora’s foibles and fumbling endearing, rather than annoying. Afterall nobody is perfect and for as simple a phrase as that is, and aswell known a concept as that is, films of this ilk so repeatedly make saints of their characters in some attempt to make their passing all the more affecting. Brooks knows and understands that he will have a far greater effect on his audience due to a focus on realism and the film is the success it is because of it.

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The tagline for the film that I have adopted for the title of this article was “come to laugh, come to cry, come to care, come to terms”. For as cute and kichy a tagline as that may be it really does get at what I’ve been alluding to. That Brooks success with this film (wins for Best Director, Best Writing, Best Picture, Best Actress and Best Supporting Actor isn’t too shabby) comes from a clear lack of  giving more weight to any of these elements. The film is certainly no out and out comedy, but it is also not the weepy it is remembered as for a good hour and forty minutes. By the time the film does reach its devastating climax however, Brooks doesn’t allow us to have a grand goodbye scene between Aurora and Emma. Again, realism is the key. No matter how painful it may be to an audience, Brooks chooses to show a more realistic depiction of things, where a lifelong husband is asleep and a mother who cares for her child like no other is simply given the smallest of looks. For as painful as this moment is, it only again furthers for me the amount of talent and quality we have on screen. For Winger and Maclaine really can convey a ten minute farewell sequence in just one shared glance, and Brooks really can feel confident in the effect this glance will have, for he has built a film and a family saga up until that point that has told many stories, but chiefly one; the story of a mother and a daughter. Still, one of the most emotionally effecting films of all time. Still, one of the best of all time.

-       -   Thomas Carruthers