Terms of Endearment is an exceptional, if unremarkable film that has some sterling individual performances, but like its immediate predecessors of the eighties, it turned out to be less than the sum of its parts. Now don’t get me wrong. I liked Terms of Endearment. It’s a tad sentimental for my taste, and the structure of the story isn’t as strong as I normally like. However, there is a lot of emotion in this script and it is populated by relatable characters, most of whom garner a lot of empathy from the audience.

Here is what I liked about Terms of Endearment.

First of all, I loved Jack Nicholson as Garrett Breedlove, the former astronaut who moves in next door to Aurora Greenway (Shirley MacLaine). Even though his last name is a tad on the nose, this fun-loving playboy has an inability to settle down, and yet in the end is able to show the compassion that we never would have thought possible. Burt Reynolds was initially offered the role, but he turned it down. I am a fan of Burt Reynolds, but while that move was devastating to his career, it was great for the rest of us, because this became another of Nicholson’s signature roles. Nicholson played the role of Garrett with a devilish panache that was the perfect counter balance to MacLaine’s uptight and proper Aurora. They say that opposites attract, and there might not be a couple in the history of cinema as far on extreme poles as these two characters. And yet, writer/director James L. Brooks created a chemistry that is second to none. These are two people who have no business being together, and yet you can’t imagine them apart. Nicholson’s patented delivery of his lines and his onscreen confidence help to create that chemistry, and he was deserving of the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor that he won for his work on this picture.

On the other side of that coin, I also loved the performance of Shirley MacLaine as Aurora. She’s a woman who lost her husband at a young age and her daughter Emma (Debra Winger) was more than a daughter to her. She was also a confidant and a best friend. One gets the sense at first that Aurora doesn’t like Emma’s betrothed Flip Horton (Jeff Daniels) simply because she doesn’t want to lose Emma to the inevitable idea of getting married. We find out later in the film, however, that Aurora was right about Flip and Emma probably could have done better. What she doesn’t see, though, is that Emma probably didn’t deserve better. More on that in a little bit. We learn very early that Aurora has had many suitors over the years, and she has ruthlessly and callously turned them all away. Yet her charms keep them all coming back for more. But she finds her match in Garrett. All of these other suitors would drown her in platitudes and poetry, but the straight talking Garrett isn’t afraid to tell her to have a drink in order to kill the bug that’s up her ass. I think that’s how Brooks along with Nicholson and MacLaine were so successful in creating the chemistry between these two characters. For the first time in her life someone besides her daughter was talking honestly to Aurora and not just telling her what they thought she wanted to hear. Garrett was absolutely himself with her, and that included saying inappropriate and lascivious things to her. While it may have been off-putting to Aurora at first, she was soon taken in by his charms and this oddest of couples became one of Hollywood’s great love stories.

I also liked the relationship between Aurora and Emma, which is the driving relationship of the film. We see from the beginning that these two mean everything to each other, and Emma is the light in Aurora’s world. The scene in the hospital where Aurora comes out demanding that the nurses give Emma the shot of painkillers is intense and heartbreaking. Aurora’s reaction when Emma looks at her as she dies in the hospital is just as heartbreaking. The reason we feel so much emotion in those scenes is because we’ve spent the entire film watching the relationship between these two people and we care about both of them because we know how devastating it would be for one of them to lose the other. That all happens in the script and any aspiring screenwriter can learn a thing or two about developing relationships by watching Terms of Endearment.

I liked how Brooks showed us the slow disintegration of Emma’s marriage with Flip. This wasn’t something that happened over days or months, but actually slowly was carried out over a decade. We watch as Flip continues to fail, and we suspect along with Emma that he’s having affairs, but we never see it until much later in the film. Yet without being certain that Flip is having an affair, Emma goes out and has an affair of her own with a local banker named Sam Burns (John Lithgow). But even the affairs don’t come right away. Flip moves them away from Houston to Iowa where he has a chance to teach, but their money situation is always tight, causing tempers to boil over, even in front of their young sons. The lack of money and the constant anger over that situation naturally drive Emma and Flip away from each other, so neither can really be blamed for seeking comfort elsewhere. Brooks did a masterful job of meticulously building the tension around this relationship so that its dissolution felt natural and almost predictable.

Ultimately Terms of Endearment is a film about relationships, and how those relationships are either strengthened or unravel by the amount of effort we put in to them. This is never more clearly shown then when Emma’s sons Tommy and Teddy come to see her in the hospital as she’s dying of cancer. They’re just boys, and Tommy, the oldest is barely ten years-old. Her resents his mother because he feels that she drove his father away and she’s never been able to properly take care of them. Now she’s on the verge of leaving them, and his youth prevents him from understanding why she can’t make herself better. This is the last time he’ll ever see her and he can’t look her in the eye, and he can’t even tell her that he loves her. In a last unselfish moment of motherly devotion Emma tells him that someday he’ll look back on this moment with regret because he never told her that he loved her. She tells him not to let that happen. She understands what he’s feeling and she knows that he loves her.

I should also point out that this was the third Best Picture winner for Shirley MacLaine, having also starred in Around the World in 80 Days and The Apartment. In doing so, she joined Clark Gable, Talia Shire and Diane Keaton in the 3-Timers club.

Here’s what I didn’t like about Terms of Endearment.

For the most part I felt that Debra Wingers performance as Emma was terrific. She was likable and energetic and she came across as the type of person with whom you would want to be friends or even lovers. She had charisma and charm and she turned Emma into a character with whom the audience could be emotionally engaged. Winger was nominated for Best Actress, but would lose out to the more deserving MacLaine. She deserved the nomination; however she was not believable in the third act when she was dying of cancer. When she first is diagnosed and when she’s told that it’s terminal, she’s actually very good. She’s emotionally devastated and then angry before finally coming to grips and accepting it. What I thought was missing was physical weakness. There is no weakness in her voice or in her demeanor, even as she’s supposed to be on death’s doorstep when she’s talking to her boys. In fact, in the scene where she actually dies, she moves her arm to be more comfortable like you might move it before you fall asleep. There was no labor to it. There was not struggle, and it took away the believability from the moment and lessened my emotional engagement.

I wasn’t a huge fan of the story structure. For the most part, the dialogue was top notch, especially the dialogue written for Garrett and for Aurora. Nicholson has some of his signature lines in this film, and most of the dialogue is wonderful. However this isn’t a film with great structure, at least in the classical sense, and it was hard for me to get into the story primarily because it was so character driven rather than plot driven. That’s just something from my personal taste. I generally prefer plot driven stories where the characters learn and grow due to what happens to them on their journeys where they have a clear goal that they either accomplish or don’t. Terms of Endearment, as mentioned earlier, is about relationships and how the evolve over the course of a lifetime. It can make for some great acting, and does in this film, but it’s not my favorite way to tell a story.

Did the Academy get it right?

I am inclined to say that they did not get it right in 1984. Terms of Endearment is a fine film, and I understand why it won. It has a powerful and emotional ending that I am sure stuck with people long after they left the theater. I’m sure that it was the ending that won this picture the Oscar. However, pound for point I feel that The Right Stuff is the better film. Now, The Right Stuff comes in at 192 minutes, similarly to the previous year’s winner, Gandhi. Perhaps the Academy didn’t want to set a trend of marathon films winning the Oscar. I could also make a case for Tender Mercies winning the Oscar in 1984, as it also has some strong emotion to it, and it was carried by a powerful performance by Robert Duvall in one of his signature roles. The Big Chill is another film about relationships and is probably more entertaining than Terms of Endearment, but not nearly as emotional. All in all, I don’t have a real strong opinion on 1983, as it wasn’t the greatest year of films. While I prefer The Right Stuff, I don’t think that it’s a crime that Terms of Endearment won.