Old Boyfriends

First feature for Joan Tewkesbury, an Altman associate who scripted Thieves Like Us and Nashville. Hesitating between its Old Hollywood ambitions and soap opera climax, it definitively blows a promising road movie story - of fucked-up West Coast psychologist Dianne Cruise (Shire) visiting three old boyfriends on a compulsive trip down memory lane. The failure owes something to slack direction, and probably more to the misogyny of Paul and Leonard Schrader's script, which contrives a distinctly reactionary mix of sentiment, morality, and melodrama.