Nobody's Fool

I'm always looking to get more stuff off the DVR to make room for new things I want to record. Recently, I had the chance to watch the little 1994 movie Nobody's Fool.

Er, not that; that song is from Caddyshack II which isn't on TV any time soon as far as I could tell. Instead, this movie stars Paul Newman as Sully (short for his surname Sullivan), who ought to be close to retirement age but instead screwed up his life to the point that he's paying rent to an elderly teacher Beryl (Jessica Tandy), working odd jobs in a Rust Belt town in western New York called North Bath, and trying to get workers' comp out of his employer, Carl Roebuck of Tip Top Construction (Bruce Willis).

As Thanksgiving is approaching, one of Sully's odd jobs involves loading a bunch of cinder blocks onto his beat up pick-up truck and transporting them somewhere unstated. However, he puts enough blocks in the truck bed such that one of the rear tires goes flat, forcing Sully to walk home and try to hitch a ride.

Who should pick up Sully but Peter (Dylan Walsh), who is actually Sully's estranged son, not having seen Dad in three years and having been raised by his Mom after Dad walked out on the family when Peter was a kid only to move just a few blocks away. Sadly, Peter hasn't quite made a success of his own life either. He was an assistant professor of English at the University of West Virginia, but cuts in the English department have cost the non-tenured Peter his job. Also, his own marriage is failing, ultimately leading Peter to ask Dad for a job.

Indeed, pretty much everybody in North Bath is not much of a success. Carl's business isn't particularly going well which might explain why he's been trying to stiff Sully on the workers' comp; at the same time, Carl's own marriage to Toby (Melanie Griffith) is failing, to the point that she's been seducing Sully, who might finally be willing to go even further. Sully's lawyer Wirf (Gene Saks) is a shyster; Beryl's son Clive Jr. (Josef Sommer) is trying to get Mom to evice Sully but failing in his own job as bank manager financing an amusement park that ultimately doesn't come to North Bath.

While Nobody's Fool is somewhat about the whole town of North Bath, it's really about Sully's place in that town and the effect he's had on everybody in town (and to a lesser extent the effect they have on each other) without his realizing it until it's almost too late. Sully is a sort of caretaker to Beryl who treats her better than her own son despite Sully's own failings. Sully wants to reconcile with Peter and Peter's son, although it's also going to mean letting them go back into the wider world at the end. And perhaps that thing with Toby isn't going to work at all.

Nobody's Fool is one of those movies without a particularly deep plot per se, being more of a slice of life movie. Paul Newman is the decided star here, and got another Oscar nomination for his part which he plays quite well. But the rest of the cast is just as good and they really make the movie shine. Jessica Tandy, in one of her final films (she died before the movie's release and the movie is dedicated to her) unsurprisingly does quite well. More surprising is Bruce Willis, who shows that perhaps he really could act given some direction. Showing promise pre-stardom is Philip Seymore Hoffman as Raymer, a police deputy with a vendetta against Sully who somehow keeps screwing things up.

The atmosphere is also quite good, although I was mildly surprised to see that a couple of towns on the east side of the Hudson River that had not yet gentrified were used as locations. Western New York has been allowed to decay for generations thanks to corrupt state politicians who don't care about anything outside the New York City metropolitan area, and I can't help but think there are a lot of towns further north and west of the Hudson Valley that could easily have played the part of North Bath. (To be fair, I'd guess being closer to New York City would make production easier.)

Nobody's Fool is a little movie that absolutely deserves to be seen and become better known. The last I checked at the TCM Shop, it's available both as a standalone DVD as well as on at least one box set.