Renee Zellweger, despite her Jennifer Tilly/Victoria Jackson, little-girl voice, is spectacular as the sassy, independent Novalyne Price, an aspiring writer who forms a friendship with Bob Howard. Howard, as played by Vincent D'Onofrio, is a loud, blustering, semi-psychotic palooka with a big-time Oedipal complex. I found him very unappealing at first, but he grows on you so that, by the end of the movie, you can sympathize with him, if not like him. The two make a perfect match: he's insultingly patronizing to her, never taking her work seriously, but she don't take no guff from him. She balances his melodramatic, overheated theatrics with down-to-earth irony. In an era of spineless doormats, she stands up to him with spirit and kindness.
The movie is beautifully shot in dusty, 1930s West Texas and moves along well, although I found myself wishing it had delved a little deeper into the characters. But the real reason to see it is Zellweger's luminous, sparkling performance which outshines her Jerry Maguire role by a Texas mile.
Postscript: Rude People at the Movies, Chapter 1,893:
I was one of the first people in the gigantic old-fashioned theater
where TWWW was showing. Huge theater; maybe 5 other
people
in it; none in my section. Two people come in AND SIT DIRECTLY IN
FRONT OF ME. I got up and moved, making a big production out of
it,
but I wish I had stayed and coughed and sneezed on them.
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