Dreadful! Any film that contains a sequence (usually 'poignant') of a character (typically a middle-aged man) watching home movies of happier days is a picture that shamelessly courts clichés. "Full Moon in Blue Water" begins with such a scene--before we even know who the characters are or what the central circumstance is (frankly, I was more curious who was shooting the home movies of Gene Hackman and his wife frolicking on the lake). Hackman plays a widower who is still grieving his wife's death by drowning after several years; he runs a tired old lakefront bar on the Texas coast, but is unknowingly sitting on prime real estate that the County commissioner wants to scare him off of. Director Peter Masterson keeps this nitwit story rolling along, but somewhere late in the second reel I felt he and the cast had nothing more to offer. Elias Koteas as a not-too-bright bar-employee nearly shows up the heavyweight stars (not just Hackman, but Teri Garr and Burgess Meredith to boot); unfortunately, his role is made impossible by a ridiculous turn of events. The action is kept very busy, yet the characters never take shape and some of the dialogue is really ugly. Garr made a lot of bad film choices after her Oscar-nominated turn in "Tootsie", but what drew Hackman to such a thin, innocuous project? *1/2 from ****
Review of Full Moon in Blue Water
