Movie Review: Midnight Cowboy

My dad brought this movie home two weeks ago and after my mom finished it, she said I had to watch this and write a review on it. Well Mom, you got your wish.

Witness Jon Voight chewing bubblegum for two full hours in this 1969 film that won Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Adapted Screenplay. That didn’t excite me because the Academy always seems to give the Best Picture award to a bad movie, something that I will never understand. This movie was more of the same.

The viewing of this movie was easily one of the least productive two-hour periods of my entire life.

This movie stars Joe Buck (Jon Voight), who decides to leave his dishwashing job in Texas and go to New York, where he intends to become a hustler (he means a man whore but he’s probably too dumb to know the term). For some reason, Joe thought it would be a great idea to bring almost no cash with him, apparently totally oblivious things might not go his way. Obviously things go very poorly from there and because this movie is so uneventful, I’d thought I tell you what happened.

1) 15 minutes of Buck riding on a travel bus chewing gum like a horse.

2) Lurid flashbacks of him and some random girl who were apparently intimate making love.

3) Upon arriving he has sex with a lady but instead of him getting paid, he gives her money for a taxi.

4)He meets Rizzo (Dustin Hoffman), who cons him out of twenty dollars. Somehow Rizzo and Joe become friends and live in an abandoned house.

That’s the first half hour of this movie if not more.

It was clearly obvious to me that this movie was meant to be a slow drama and that the only way this movie was going to succeed was if Voight and Hoffman could make us care about the characters. They failed, at least for me, in dramatic fashion. All Buck seems to think about is sex and between that and his stupidity/naivety, I really don’t care about him and given Rizzo’s nails-on-a-chalkboard voice and his witty banter, all I want him to do is shut up. Throughout the whole movie, Voight has a look on his face like “why did I agree to film this”, a question I was constantly asking myself. There are random visual hallucinations in some spots as if Buck is high or something and they never explain why he has these random flashbacks. I’m guessing they were trying to describe his past so that we would know how he got where he is now, but the flashback glimpses are so small that I wasn’t able to connect the dots. Wikipedia had to tell me what was going on. For a movie that was supposed to be adapted from a book, they didn’t do a good job of retelling the story.

Everyone that the two don’t like they refer to as “a word beginning with the letter f that means homosexual”. There’s no action and no humor so there’s really no other elements here to enjoy, unless you’re laughing at the stupidity and pure randomness of the film.

Once again, if you’re new to my blog,  I’ve always ranked movies on a scale of 0-100 (I don’t know why, I just always have). Here’s the grading scale.

 90-100  It’s a great movie and definitely one worth buying. (Iron Man 3, World War Z)

80-89   It was a pretty good movie and definitely one worth seeing, but it doesn’t quite scratch my top ten percentile. (Star Trek Into Darkness, Now You See Me, Man of Steel, Monster-In-Law, White House Down)

70-79   It’s okay but I’ve seen better. It has its moments, but it has its flaws, too. (Oblivion)

60-69   It’s got plenty wrong with it but I still got enjoyment out of this one. (Pacific Rim)

50-59   This movie isn’t intolerable but it’s not blowing my mind either. I’m trying really hard to get some sort of enjoyment out of this. (The Hobbit, After Earth, Road to Perdition)

40-49   This movie is just mediocre. It’s not doing anything other than the bare minimal, so morbidly boring that sometimes I’m actually angry I watched this. (Patriot Games)

30-39   Definitely worse than mediocre, the 30’s ironically define the 1930’s, full of depression, lack of accomplishments, poverty and just so dumb. (The Contract, Pride and Prejudice)

20-29   What did I just watch? Cliches, stupidity, nothingness, did I mention stupidity? Just…wow.

0-19      Watching this movie resulted in one or more of the following: seizure, loss of brain cells, falling asleep/unconsciousness, feel you wasted your time/day, accomplished nothing for you, left the movie knowing less about it then you did going into it, constantly asking yourself why you came to see this movie, or near-death experience. In short, staring at a wall was just as entertaining as watching this movie. This movie deserved a sticker or a label that said, “WARNING: EXTREME AMOUNT OF SUCKAGE.”

My score for Midnight Cowboy: 15.

There were many plot holes and the character connection was nonexistent. I will admit the last 10 or so minutes aren’t bad and I might have cared a little, but aside from that, it was utter crap. There is some nudity and sex which leads me to believe that the only reason this movie received an Academy Award for Best Picture is because the panel judges were horny when they watched this. It filled 6 of my 9 suckage requirements (1) loss of brain cells 2) waste of time 3) accomplished nothing 4) almost knew less than I did going in 5) why did I see this 6) staring at a wall). Congratulations, you’ve been awarded a WARNING: EXTREME AMOUNT OF SUCKAGE label.

*SPOILER ALERT* IF YOU DON’T WANT THE MOVIE SPOILED, STOP READING!!!

*SPOILER’S EDITION*

Wait, you actually think I’m going to waste even more of my life writing about this movie? Haha, very funny. I will add this friendly warning though:

WARNING: DO NOT WATCH THIS MOVIE. TIM WATCHES THESE BAD MOVIES SO YOU DON’T HAVE TO. DON’T LET HIS SACRIFICE BE IN VAIN!!! UNLESS YOU’RE LOOKING TO SERIOUSLY INJURE YOURSELF, THEN BY ALL MEANS, GO AHEAD.