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Midnight Cowboy (1969)

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8 reviews

Movie review

From Time Out Film Guide

Outrageously overrated at the cynical end of the Swinging Sixties, when the seedy New York milieu in which the pathetic buddy-buddy story takes place was thought to be truthfully depicted. Instead, as Voight's likeably dumb Texan hick hustler teams up with limping guttersnipe Hoffman in an effort to make enough money from the wealthy women of New York to fulfil dreams of living in sunny Florida, the film indulges in bland satire, fashionable flashiness, and a sodden sentimentality that never admits either to its homosexual elements or to the basic misogyny of its stance. Add to that a glamorisation of poverty and an ending that makes Love Story seem restrained, and you have a fairly characteristic example of Schlesinger's shallow talent. (From a novel by James Leo Herlihy.

Author: GA

Time Out Film Guide

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User reviews of this film

Malcolm said...

Posted on Apr 18 2010 20:34 That's a shocking, scandalous and mendacious review. MC was perhaps the first film ever to show the seedy underside of urban life as courageous and as powerful today as it was over 40 years ago. The atmosphere conveys the end of the 60s and the coming of the Sick 70s in the US like no other - surely enough to guarantee its place in the hall of fame alone. Also arguably along with the Graduate one of the first films to use a multi-track (and unforgettable) soundtrack as an integral part of the film narrative. Shame on Time Out, get another reviewer!

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Trent said...

Posted on Nov 18 2009 03:24 Is this reviewer ON CRACK? Why don't go watch some light-hearted romantic comedy or some lame frathouse fart joke fest...This is one of the worst, misguided reviews I've read...Get another job. You aren't suited to for this one. Oh...and how's that lame or screenplay coming along, you hack? 'Cause this is obviously just "your day job"...

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JCarper said...

Posted on Nov 18 2009 02:37 Whoever wrote this review surely does not understand the sixties; for that matter, the 20th century. The film was mysogynistic because most men were so in those erstwhile days. Perhaps I missed something, but the overwhelming objects of Joe Buck's attention were career women - yes, career women, who now are fifty percent of the American workforce. Joe Buck and Rico Rizzo are both anachronisms; they are tragic heroes who are shamelessly doomed from the outset. Neither realized that the American woman had shed her 2nd class citizenship facade and shuffled on to prime status amongst the demagogues who anointed themselves God's heroes and men. This film ushers in the era of women's lib, which is now the national standard, for better or for worse, in the fabric that is our present day American society. Joe's Buck's idea of the American dream is defined by the three B's - babes, booze, and barbarism, but unfortunately, he is @ least 15 years too late. Someone missed the meaning of this film BIGTIME. This movie, like NYC, swallows the audience whole and leaves it gasping for air from the tile to the credits. But then again, that's the reason that 'everybody's talkin.'

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luv the sixties said...

Posted on Jun 22 2009 17:51 My favorite movie of all time. Not a feel-good movie to say the least but very moving. I thought the acting, music and directing were exceptional. The academy got it right with this one!

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jay em said...

Posted on Apr 14 2009 19:05 Whatever...TIME OUT COMPLETELY BLOWS IT with this review. It's one of the greatest films to come out of one of the greatest periods of American filmmaking...

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Edward Como said...

Posted on Jan 04 2009 21:02 Hey guys there's a bus leaving in 10 minutes....be UNDER it. I guess think The Dark Knight or Harry Putter is a solid movie. Remind me never to read anything you guys write...again...EVER!!! Ya' bunch a' Dopes!!!

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overkill said...

Posted on Dec 20 2008 07:30 ...
You guys wouldn't know good film making if it fell on ya.

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yduric said...

Posted on Sep 01 2007 02:36 I will be even harder than TimeOut towards this film: the fact that it was so praised and even oscarized is beyond my belief: first of all, the film is caricatural, exploiting the equation: big city=cruelty and road to perdition to such an extreme that it achieves quite the opposite: all the supposedly 'bad' characters that our 'poor little heroes' encounter are in fact far more likeable than them. Second, the suggestion that New York is responsible for their condition never rings true: I had quite the oppossite feeling, that they thought the world owed them everything and that this was an excuse for any kind of hatable behaviour. And with all this, are we supposed to feel sympathy for two characters who are as wretched morally as materially? It should be rememebered that Joe Buck even MURDERS the old man that invited him to his hotel room in order to get his money!!! (the excuse: he must put his buddy on a bus to Florida!!!) No, I do not buy it, this is only a display of cheap and self-indulgent miserabilism that no 'outcast' condition will ever justify.

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