Twice in a Lifetime

A movie that TCM could easily have used for the "working class" spotlight this month is, instead, showing up on a Saturday evening. That movie is Twice in a Lifetime, which will be on tomorrow (Jan. 24) at 8:00 PM.

Gene Hackman stars as Harry Mackenzie, who works in a steel mill in a small town between Seattle and Tacoma, going home to a cramped house where he lives with his wife Kate (Ellen Burstyn) and two daughters. Helen (Ally Sheedy) is about to graduate high school and has a boyfriend Tim, while Sunny (Amy Madigan) is married to Keith (Stephen Lang) and has two children of her own. Keith is currently out of a job, which seems premised on the idea of the steel mill having something like the corrupt union in On the Waterfront based on a scene in which we see a foreman calling out who gets work that day, with Keith not being mentioned.

Harry is about to turn 50, which seems quite young to have two grandkids of the age he does, but don't bother yourself with that plot point. The whole family celebrates at the Mackenzie house. Kate doesn't really want to go out that night, but Harry's friends do, so Kate encourages Harry to go out to the local bar with his friends for a second birthday celebration. There's a new woman behind the bar, Audrey (Ann-Margret), and Harry's friends suggest that the two of them kiss since Harry's wife isn't there.

Something happens, and Harry and Audrey decide to meet up for a lunch. Harry then helps Audrey do some electrical work back at her apartment, and before you know it, the two of them are having an affair just because Harry wants a bit of excitement in his life. Kate isn't a bad person, but she just can't bring herself to put any sort of spark back into the marriage considering all the other stuff that's going on trying to keep a family going.

Anyhow, one day, one of Kate's gossipy friends happens to be driving through town and pulls up to a stop sign next to Harry and Audrey. She immediately suspects something is going on, and blabs it to Kate. Harry admits it to Kate, who isn't exactly happy but is relatively determined to go on with life. Sunny, for her part, is hysterically pissed, taking it out on anybody and everybody. Indeed, when Dad finally moves out of the house and into a Seattle apartment with Audrey, Sunny is the only one who doesn't want to give Dad a hug or shake his hand.

Kate, meanwhile, is left to rebuild her life, and with a bit of help from Sunny she starts breaking out of her shell, first by getting a job as a hairdresser and then by going to a Chippendales-type club. Helen, for her part, realizes that she's not going to be able to afford college with the family situation the way it is, so she's going to marry Tim and maybe try night school to get credits here and there. (Nowadays, of course, she could just try one of the online universities, but this was the mid-1980s.) It's the impending marriage that finally forces Dad to meet up with Mom again, but what sort of relationship if any are they going to be able to have going forward?

I think I'd agree with most of the other reviews that I read: Twice in a Lifetime is a well-acted movie. But it's one with a mess of a script in that there's not a whole lot going on and nobody's charcters get to be as fleshed out as they should be. Ann-Margret is also much too glamorous for her role, or maybe she should just have been glammed down the way Burstyn is (to very good effect). Also note that the print TCM ran last time was panned-and-scanned down from 1.85:1 to 4:3. Indeed, I wondered at first whether this was a TV movie. As it turns out, Amy Madigan received an Oscar nomination, so no, it's a genuine movie.