Customer Reviews

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I thought this was a wonderful version of this play. Lange is a wonder to watch as she struggles to keep her marriage and her life from falling completely apart. Jones, while many thought he was a poor choice, brings a very refreshing interpretation of Brick. He comes across more as the broken man that he is, the drunkard he has become. A man afraid to face the truth, which Big Daddy forces him to face. Act II, the scene between Brick and Big Daddy, played by Rip Torn, is powerful and engaging. It is a very honest performance by the cast, making it an absolute delight to watch. If you are a fan of Williams' plays then I highly recommend this.

Of course everyone will compare this 1984 remake of one of Tennessee Williams' best plays with the 1950's version starring Elizabeth Taylor and Paul Newman. The director, actors and everyone else involved in this production have nothing to be embarrassed about for this is a fine movie indeed. In fairness to the Taylor-Newman movie, because of the censorship of that repressed era, the plot does not make a lot of sense. These actors though have the advantage of working with a story that Mr. Williams had revised so that the relationship that Brick and Skipper had that keeps interfering with Brick's marriage with Maggie now makes sense. ("A pure and true thing is not normal.") Additionally Taylor and Newman are so incredibly attractive that sometimes their good looks get in the way of their acting. Here we have really stellar performances by Jessica Lange as Maggie, Tommy Lee Jones as Brick-- he's a lot better than many of the critics say-- Rip Torn as Big Daddy and Kim Stanley as Big Momma. Tommy Lee Jones does some terrific acting with just his eyes and facial expressions alone. Jessica Lange continues to demonstrate that she is one of the best actresses of her generation. She gives a beautifully nuanced performance, expressing a wide range of emotions and can go from a vulnerable, lovable kitten to a clawing cat at the turn of a fan. The scenes between Big Daddy and Brick, through excruciating, are very moving.

While Mr. Willams as usual places his characters in the South, they resemble dysfunctional families everywhere. Greed, sexual repression, sibling rivalry, dishonesty, awareness of one's own mortality and family in-fighting know no geographical boundries.

Mr. Williams would be proud of this production.

This has got to be the best adaptation of a play I have ever seen. I was a five year old kid watching this when it first came out on Showtime! I loved it then, and now I love it even more and fully understand it! Lange has never been so sexy nor great. Besides being the best actress in the world, her performance in here really displays her dramatic talents. Jones was born to play Brick and he does a great job. The settings in this version are so well designed and set-up it makes you wonder if they are in a REAL plantation home! And the rest of the cast, particularly the wonderful Torn, do an outstanding job. Besides the scenes between Jones and Torn being overly long and you find yourself missing Lange's prescence, this is a high recommendation.

I can remember watching this on Showtime back in 1984, and both then and now, I can not deny just how much justice the cast and crew did to Williams' classic play of alcoholism, homosexuality, death, and so on. Jessica Lange is incredibly sexy as the sexually frustrated Maggie the Cat, while Tommy Lee Jones is superb as her alcoholic ex-sports announcer husband, Brick. Gorgeous set designs and powerful acting from the entire accomplished cast make for a wonderfully entertaining, updated version of a modern classic.

This play is about a woman trying to redeem her husband who is drinking himself to ruin because he can't deal with the fact that he was in love with his dead football buddy - another man. If you watch this version, that's what you'll see. Sadly, the Paul Newman version was made in a time when it wasn't OK for Maggie to try to help her man own up to his love for his friend, so instead, the story became about her trying to save him from alcoholism. This is a much less dramatic topic, and it's frankly dull and offensive to a beautifully written story. It's like telling "Little Red Riding Hood" as a story about the perils of packing a picnic basket, without any mention of a big bad wolf. If you want to see the fabulous play Williams actually wrote, get this one. If you just want to look at nice acting in a badly mangled, lame story, get the older one.

What courage it must take to play Cat on a Hot Tin Roof! The definitive performances of Elizabeth Taylor and Paul Newman in the 1958 Richard Brooks film has to to be intimidating to most actors. This reviewer had avoided, until recently, watching the 1998 re-make with Tommie Lee Jones and Jessica Lange. Although Jones is a powerful actor who can deliver a convincing hard edge overlying tender sensitivity, he could not possibly play the wounded son Brick! Well, don't delay watching this film! What a happy surprise to see the interpretation Jones gives of Brick! Jones may show us one of his best works on film in this movie. And this 1998 film has the much-appreciated bonus and honesty of including Williams' more specific sexual revelations than was permitted in the 1958 film. Rip Torn is a special treat! He is not Burl Ives as Big Daddy, but he is Rip Torn as Big Daddy. This fine actor gives us an exemplary re-creation of Big Daddy. How wonderful it is that we can be thrilled by both of these movies! Neither takes anything away from the other. They simply show us excellent, but different, portrayals of the same complex characters.

Not many folks know about this TV version of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. I have been looking for it everywhere and finally found it on Amazon. I think it's a fabulous rendition of the Tenessee Williams play featuring an ex-football jock, his frustrated wife and the dynamics of a family hankering for a piece of a dying man's fortune. Tommy Lee Jones and Jessica Lang are outstanding as Brick and Maggie the Cat.

I also own the Paul Newman/Elizabeth Taylor version of this play. It's an undisputed classic, but If you are a fan of the story, you should also view the Jessica Lang/Tommy Lee Jones version. In some ways, I think this version is even more intense than the more universally known classic.

One simply couldn't ask for a better incarnation of 'Cat on a Hot Tin Roof' than this one.

Both the Amazon reviewer for this film, (and some of the subsequent Amazon audience reviewers), exhibit really stellar blindness in critiquing this tv adaptation of a fine Williams play.

Did someone actually submit that the simpering 1958 version was still better? Come ON. Holy hannah. That absurd piece of Hollywood fluff, which did its best to dodge every subtext the play had to offer? Gimme a break.


Theatre fans, this Torn/Jones/Lange version has what it takes to do the play justice. Toss the negative reviews out the window, they aren't worth the narrow bandwidth they were written on. Sheeeeesh.

In this 1984 production of "Cat On Hot Tin Roof" the play is allowed to retains some of Tennessee Williams original acerbic script. Yet some how lacks the intensity of the 1950's version. Perhaps because Jessica Lange, lacks sensuality and delivers her lines in a unconvincing high pitched Southern screech. She is both painful and irritating to watch because her acting skills are so mediocre. Beside her Tommy Lee Jones is totally convincing as the profoundly closeted ,grieving, and drunken former football hero Brick. ...

Rip Torn is excellent as "Big Daddy" delivering his lines with a wily humor that makes him more likable than perhaps his character should be. The reminder of the cast are able if not remarkable with Big Mama competing with Jessica Lange as having the most contrived performance on screen. I would have liked this film more if the sound quality had been better. It was simply horrible.

Although the play is about Brick's latent homosexuality and stubborn self-loathing. I feel that it is also really about "Maggie the Cat" and how Brick's sexual rejection of her leads not only to frustation but the risk of poverty to which she refuses to return. Her battle of wills over Big Daddy's inheritance with Gooper and his fertility monster wife May is at the core of the play. The play could be considered cruel towards women since Maggie the cat is portrayed as a bitchy harridan because of sexual neglect. She can not sexully compete with the homosexuality charged bond between her husband and his recently dead friend Skipper.

What rescues it from mocking the fertility linked sexuality of women is the fact that Big Daddy is so obviously embittered about his own life, inspite of having crawled his way out of the gutter into ostentacious wealth. He is still not happy and so takes it out on his wife Big Mama. Who's loyalty is breathtaking in the face of so much humiliation. Unable to squeeze any demonstrative love or respect from her husband and sons. You feel uncomfortable watching her feeble attempts to create a normal family celebration. Its contrived and you know she knows its fake but you can not fault her for trying anyway. Her efforts are beaten down verbally by Big Daddy as blatant hypocrisy but you sense that she has nothing else left to live for. So you don't criticize her. The fact that Tennessea Williams play is able to make you feel compassion for Big Mama is an indication of his great brillience as a playwrite and chronicler of his age. The story is a timeless one of unhappy people compelled to fraternize with each other because of material gain. Skeletons rattle out of the cupboards and closets because everyone has something hidden behind their rage. This production is worth watching because ...I would suggest renting it first.

Only three stars because of the sound quality.

Not one to knock Newman and Taylor's exquisite turns as Brick and Maggie, but maybe to knock the censors of the day who cut all the subtext out of every movie made from 1930 to 1968 (Streetcar Named Desire, anyone? If you haven't seen the play, you don't know the story), this is the version Tennessee intended (well, his dialogue anyway). Brick's true feelings for his friend are "REVEALED" as Mr. Williams wrote them. And damn the censors!