Urban Cowboy

Another of the movies that I had the chance to record during one of the free preview weekends is Urban Cowboy. It's going to be on StarzEncore Classics twice tomorrow, at 5:14 AM and 2:18 PM, as well as a couple more times next week, so I sat down to watch the movie and do a blog post on here.

New Jersey-born John Travolta stars as Bud Davis, a man living in a relatively poor area of east Texas with his parents. He wants to better his lot in life, so he's decided to move to the Houston area where his Uncle Bob (Barry Corbin) lives, who works in the energy industry that was a hugely growing part of the Texas economy in the late 1970s. Bob is more than willing to help Bud get a job in the industry, and even gets Bud a girl on his first night in town, when they go to the honky-tonk owned by country singer Mickey Gilley (playing himself; Gilley's was a real place that burned down in the late 1980s).

Bud does get a job at the same company Uncle Bob works at, at least on a provisional basis, and spends his evenings and weekends at Gilley's. There he meets Sissy (Debra Winger), and it's love at first sight. Indeed, the couple gets marrried at Gilley's before moving into a brand new trailer that Bud has been able to purchase. And they live happily ever after, right? Well, of course not, considering that the movie would be over pretty darn quickly.

Mickey Gilley decides to install a mechanical bull at Gilley's for patrons to try their luck on, as well as a few other things to try to reduce the level of violence among the patrons. Bud immediately tries it and enjoys the experience. Sissy would like to try it too, but Bud, being a bit of a traditionalist, doesn't want Sissy to try. Also showing up at Gilley's is Wes Hightower (Scott Glenn), a parolee in need of a job to try to rehabilitate himself.

Bud and Sissy fight over her wanting to ride that mechanical bull, especially after she defies his demand that she not do it. So Bud throws Sissy out, and she goes running to Wes since he's an exciting bad boy. She doesn't realize just how bad a boy Wes is, however. Bud, meanwhile, meets Pam (Madolyn Smith), a much higher-class woman from a tony part of Houston, and falls in love with her although she's eventually going to figure out that she doesn't really love Bud the way Sissy does. This despite Bud and Sissy deciding to get a divorce. There's still some time, however, before the divorce goes through.

The film climaxes with the big contest of a mechanical bull riding contest at Gilley's, with the winner getting $5,000. Wes enters hoping to get the money to take himself and Sissy to Mexico, while Bud, who was training with Uncle Bob until... eventually decides to enter at his aunt's insistence and as a way to try to win back Sissy. You can guess how things are going to end, even though there's one more twist to come.

Urban Cowboy is a movie that ultimately is treading over the same ground that a lot of other movies do, of a small-town boy going to the big city and finding love and loss. The big difference, of course, is that the movie is set against the backdrop of a specific subculture that doesn't get represented too often on film. Indeed, Urban Cowboy set off a bit of a country craze in the early 1980s as several of the songs in the movie became surprise pop hits.

Debra Winger unsurprisingly does well here, while John Travolta is a big surprise as Bud. Some of the IMDb reviews suggest that his accent isn't particularly correct or consistent, but that doesn't really matter due to the performance. If the movie has a flaw, it's that it runs rather long at about 130 minutes. They probably could have found a way to cut a good 20 to 30 minutes and keep the story intact.

If you haven't seen Urban Cowboy before, I can definitely recommend it.