John Travolta applies a credible, bitter intensity to his role as Bud, unworldly kid who moves to Houston to live with relatives and work at a nearby plant, eventually discovering Gilley's Bar, country music, and a high-spirited local gal (Debra Winger) whom he marries. So much of this sophomoric drama seems familiar, and indeed the structure of the film (with Travolta coming of age--after doing some dancing at Gilley's, of course) comes off like "Saturday Night Fever" in western-dress. Still, as much as I disliked the stereotyped Brooklyn hard-boys in "Fever", with their hyped-up talk and trashy mouths, the characters in this picture are much more clichéd. Poor Scott Glenn gets the worst of it: first he's a rodeo rider from the prison, then he's working at Gilley's, then he's with Winger, then he's a woman-beater, then he's planning a heist...any one of these bad attributes would be enough, yet nobody seems to notice that Glenn's character is simply a "plot function". Winger shines in spots, and she's a hard worker, but one tires of her stridency and volatility; in the last act, when she's called upon to be victimized, she loses some of her radiance and we wish for that stridency back. The other performers get stuck with stock characters and the bar-scenes lack vitality, as does the soundtrack which is chock full of glossy country-fied pop. Near the finale, when Travolta and his uncle are called to the plant at night during a lightning storm, the viewer is ten miles ahead of the screenwriter. It's movies like this that sunk Travolta's career for years. ** from ****
Review of Urban Cowboy
