Watching the progression of the relationship between Idgie (Mary Stuart Masterson) and Ruth (Mary-Louise Parker) is fairly interesting. The story is a flashback; a story related by Ninny Threadgoode (Jessica Tandy) to Evelyn (Kathy Bates) who befriends Ninny in a local nursing home. So right off the top you can see that there's a pretty decent cast. Also almost from the start you realize that Ninny is a bit of an enigmatic character. Is she or is she not Idgie relating her own story? The movie seems to lead in that direction but never actually makes it explicit, so in the end it's left to the viewer to decide. Basically, this ends up as a murder mystery from the past. Ruth's abusive husband is murdered, and the question is who killed him. Idgie is put on trial for the crime, but the charges are dismissed. The mystery is held pretty well until the end of the movie.
The movie begins with Idgie as a child, and with Ruth as her older brother Buddy's love interest. After Buddy's tragic death, Idgie and Ruth develop a very close friendship - the movie bobs and weaves around the issue of what the nature of their relationship was. Was it just a close friendship? Was it more? My feeling from the movie is that Idgie wanted more than a friendship; Ruth's interests were less clear. I haven't read the book, but I understand that the novel is quite clear in making the point that there was a lesbian romance between the two. Perhaps Hollywood in 1991 was still too nervous about such an issue to make it front and centre; ambiguity was as much as the studios could stomach apparently. We follow both of them through the ups and downs of life as they open a cafe together, whose menu specialty is - you guessed it - fried green tomatoes.
Kathy Bates provided some comedy to the movie as the modern day housewife who goes through a rebirth after meeting Ninny - a rebirth that totally confuses her husband Ed (Gailard Sartain), who doesn't have a clue why Evelyn is changing so much and upsetting their comfortable existence. While she provided comedy, I wasn't really taken in by Bates' character in this. I thought the constant switching between present and past was overdone and not particularly well done to be honest; in a lot of ways the two parts of the stories didn't mesh that well. Aside from Bates, there were a lot of very likable characters from the past, such as Big George (Stan Shaw) and Smokey Lonesome (Timothy Scott.) The identity of Ruth's husband's killer in the end took me by surprise, so that was well done.
My final reaction to this was that it was a basically well made and well acted movie, and at times even an interesting movie as the story unfolded - but that it also seemed like a movie that was anything but overpowering. It didn't leave me awestruck. (5/10)
The movie begins with Idgie as a child, and with Ruth as her older brother Buddy's love interest. After Buddy's tragic death, Idgie and Ruth develop a very close friendship - the movie bobs and weaves around the issue of what the nature of their relationship was. Was it just a close friendship? Was it more? My feeling from the movie is that Idgie wanted more than a friendship; Ruth's interests were less clear. I haven't read the book, but I understand that the novel is quite clear in making the point that there was a lesbian romance between the two. Perhaps Hollywood in 1991 was still too nervous about such an issue to make it front and centre; ambiguity was as much as the studios could stomach apparently. We follow both of them through the ups and downs of life as they open a cafe together, whose menu specialty is - you guessed it - fried green tomatoes.
Kathy Bates provided some comedy to the movie as the modern day housewife who goes through a rebirth after meeting Ninny - a rebirth that totally confuses her husband Ed (Gailard Sartain), who doesn't have a clue why Evelyn is changing so much and upsetting their comfortable existence. While she provided comedy, I wasn't really taken in by Bates' character in this. I thought the constant switching between present and past was overdone and not particularly well done to be honest; in a lot of ways the two parts of the stories didn't mesh that well. Aside from Bates, there were a lot of very likable characters from the past, such as Big George (Stan Shaw) and Smokey Lonesome (Timothy Scott.) The identity of Ruth's husband's killer in the end took me by surprise, so that was well done.
My final reaction to this was that it was a basically well made and well acted movie, and at times even an interesting movie as the story unfolded - but that it also seemed like a movie that was anything but overpowering. It didn't leave me awestruck. (5/10)