Good old Ed Couch. All he wants to do when he gets home is have dinner and watch a game on television. Normal stuff. But his bouncy wife, Evelyn (Kathy Bates in top form) lives in a world of "should": what marriage should be, how her husband should act, what she herself should be like. Ed (Gailard Sartain) pretty much lets all that wash over him. He doesn't even complain when she tears down a wall in their house only to rebuild it later.
Ed has an aunt in a nursing home, a woman we never see but who throws things at Evelyn to keep her out of the room when they visit. This happens twice, so it's not a sudden tizzy. It's animosity, probably because she's had enough of Evelyn's incessant smile, which hides a stubborn streak, and her passive-aggressive nature that, in the worst instance, exploded in a parking lot where she heedlessly, cheerfully, and repeatedly rear-ended a car that took a parking space she wanted.
At the nursing home, Evelyn befriends Ninny (Jessica Tandy, still glorious at 81), who becomes her Scheherazade, telling tales of the Great Depression in Alabama. The Southern Gothic story of Idgie, as she calls herself (Mary Stuart Masterson) and her friend Ruth (Mary-Louise Parker) involves murder, homelessness, racism, wife-beating, and cannibalism, which is presented tongue-in-cheek (so to speak), yet we are repeatedly shown the boiling pot. Like I said, Southern Gothic.
The 1930s plot kicks off with the accidental death of Idgie's beloved brother, Buddy (Chris O'Donnell). Accidental and problematic: while walking on railroad tracks, he is struck by a train when his shoe gets caught in a guard rail. Reality check: rural tracks don't have guard rails; imagine the expense.
Most of the movie is about that era, but the tone is firmly set by Evelyn who, at one point, joins a female support group, a bizarre scene that brings a whole different problem to this headstrong movie. The group meeting involves the women dropping their drawers and grabbing hand mirrors to look at their groins. To her credit, Evelyn doesn't join the lunatic gynecological tour, and I was left wondering why a movie that seems to celebrate women would choose to mock a support group using sex. It could only be another desperate-for-laughs thing, like Evelyn cheerfully weaponizing her car.
Meanwhile, good old Ed finally reaches his limit with Evelyn when she unilaterally decides that Ninny will live with them. He objects, reasonably enough, and when persuasion fails, he draws the line, "It's not going to happen." Her cheerful, stubborn, insulting reply, "I'll do all the work," dismisses her husband as if he was a boarder.
The movie expects us to like Evelyn in spite of her behavior, presumably just because she's female (or because she's Kathy Bates, who is marvelous, which is cheating), as if there's something superior about one gender or the other. But you're only as good as your actions, whatever your gender, and Evelyn needs an intervention before she rams the auto-insurance office that rejects her claim.
Ed has an aunt in a nursing home, a woman we never see but who throws things at Evelyn to keep her out of the room when they visit. This happens twice, so it's not a sudden tizzy. It's animosity, probably because she's had enough of Evelyn's incessant smile, which hides a stubborn streak, and her passive-aggressive nature that, in the worst instance, exploded in a parking lot where she heedlessly, cheerfully, and repeatedly rear-ended a car that took a parking space she wanted.
At the nursing home, Evelyn befriends Ninny (Jessica Tandy, still glorious at 81), who becomes her Scheherazade, telling tales of the Great Depression in Alabama. The Southern Gothic story of Idgie, as she calls herself (Mary Stuart Masterson) and her friend Ruth (Mary-Louise Parker) involves murder, homelessness, racism, wife-beating, and cannibalism, which is presented tongue-in-cheek (so to speak), yet we are repeatedly shown the boiling pot. Like I said, Southern Gothic.
The 1930s plot kicks off with the accidental death of Idgie's beloved brother, Buddy (Chris O'Donnell). Accidental and problematic: while walking on railroad tracks, he is struck by a train when his shoe gets caught in a guard rail. Reality check: rural tracks don't have guard rails; imagine the expense.
Most of the movie is about that era, but the tone is firmly set by Evelyn who, at one point, joins a female support group, a bizarre scene that brings a whole different problem to this headstrong movie. The group meeting involves the women dropping their drawers and grabbing hand mirrors to look at their groins. To her credit, Evelyn doesn't join the lunatic gynecological tour, and I was left wondering why a movie that seems to celebrate women would choose to mock a support group using sex. It could only be another desperate-for-laughs thing, like Evelyn cheerfully weaponizing her car.
Meanwhile, good old Ed finally reaches his limit with Evelyn when she unilaterally decides that Ninny will live with them. He objects, reasonably enough, and when persuasion fails, he draws the line, "It's not going to happen." Her cheerful, stubborn, insulting reply, "I'll do all the work," dismisses her husband as if he was a boarder.
The movie expects us to like Evelyn in spite of her behavior, presumably just because she's female (or because she's Kathy Bates, who is marvelous, which is cheating), as if there's something superior about one gender or the other. But you're only as good as your actions, whatever your gender, and Evelyn needs an intervention before she rams the auto-insurance office that rejects her claim.