The Sugarland Express (1974)
**Spoilers ahead**
Having recently watched the documentary The Shark is Still Working: The Impact and Legacy of “Jaws” and having heard of The Sugarland Express many times, and being a Steven Spielberg fan, I decided to finally watch his first film. Considering this is the film that made everyone take notice of Spielberg, and in light of the many positive reviews of it, I was expecting a great film that would point to the genius that is usually the hallmark of his films. Unfortunately, it didn’t live up to the hype.
First of all, the movie is a lie. It states it is based on a true story, but that is a bit of a stretch. It is no more than inspired by the story of Fae Holiday/Dent and her husband Robert “Bobby” Dent, a young couple who actually led Texas law enforcement on a slow-moving caravan in 1969. As far as I can tell from the news reports of the actual incident, the only things that the movie gets right are that the main couple, played in the film by Goldie Hawn and William Atherton, are married and do take a police officer hostage as they travel to Sugarland, Texas. Oh, Atherton’s character and his real-life counterpart are both killed by police, but that’s pretty much it. This movie is the perfect example of the question I ask about far too many true-life movies: if you aren’t going to tell the ACTUAL story, why do filmmakers pretend that they’re telling a true story?
Putting the changes aside, the movie just isn’t all that interesting. It starts off okay, with Hawn’s Lou Jean breaking Atherton’s Clovis out of jail, although putting it that way is a bit of a stretch as well, since he is in “pre-release” which is very low security, so they just walk right out of the jail without anyone giving them a second look. I wanted to know what was going to happen next, why they ended up being pursued by so many cops. Alas, what happens is a comedy of errors that ends in death, but the way it plays out is neither funny nor interesting. Lou Jean is hell-bent on getting their son, Baby Langston (which is the only way Lou Jean ever refers to him), from his foster home, where he has been living while his parents were each in jail. Lou Jean doesn’t care that perhaps two fugitives may not be the best parents; since he is their child, she believes he belongs with her, full stop. Shockingly, their supporters feel the same, as the two become heroes over the course of the movie.
Essentially, Lou Jean and Clovis pick the two worst people on Earth to help them escape, ending up in a slow-moving, then broken-down car, which forces them to think quickly and jump into a nearby squad car, thus beginning their evasion from the authorities. This should have been the beginning of a high-octane, action-filled story, but since they literally stop and start for extended periods of time, that isn’t the case. Alternatively then, I would have expected a dramatic character-driven story, that would have drawn me in, making me root for either the police or for Clovis and Lou Jean, but that didn’t happen either. Instead, we’re subjected to Hawn’s overacting and screeching, when she isn’t mumbling her lines, interminable slow-moving police caravans and police band conversations, interrupted by chaotic scenes of police cars crashing into each other and bursts of gunfire that don’t do anything except cause property damage. “Sharpshooters” are brought in at a couple of different points to take down Clovis and Lou Jean, but they are terrible at their job. Even at the end, when they finally do shoot Clovis, they barely get a shot off, as they are hampered when a tree blocks their shot. ALL THEY HAD TO DO WAS MOVE AND THEY WOULD HAVE BEEN ABLE TO STILL SHOOT HIM, but they wait until HE moves!! By this point in the movie I had given up on it making sense and just wanted it to be over.
From all of the positive reviews, it is clear to me that people are either caught up in the spectacle of this being Spielberg’s directorial debut or in that it is so different from his other movies, therefore they love it. While there are a few lovely shots here and there, the direction overall is spotty with way too many close-ups, which was the style in a lot of 70s movies, and the tone is all over the place. The attempts at comedy don’t land and the drama is simultaneously too dramatic and not dramatic enough. I don’t care about anyone, except for Langston, hoping that he never ever has to see his parents again. Sadly, I didn’t even get that satisfaction, since the crawl at the end states he ended up living with his mother once she was released from jail. This again though, is a lie. Since the real woman didn’t have a baby boy, but two older children, saying that she and her baby lived quietly after her release is an unnecessary fabrication.
The worst part of this movie is the script; it is amazingly terrible. It’s hard to follow the conversations as they either make no sense whatsoever or the actors deliver their lines in a mumble. I realize that sound mixing wasn’t the best in the 70s and I watched a DVD without cleaned up audio, but I should still be able to follow the conversation and make sense of what the characters are saying to each other. There are truly times where the lines of dialogue make no sense; what one person says and how another responds came across as if separate conversations are taking place but we’re only hearing one side of each and they’re mashed together as a single conversation.
This film didn’t make much money when released and also wasn’t a big hit with critics. For reasons unknowable to me, over the years this movie has come to be thought of as a masterpiece, as mentioned earlier, but I don’t see it. This isn’t a case of my being able to understand how my opinion can differ from others; I truly do not understand how anyone can watch this film and think it is interesting or good, let alone great. How this won Best Screenplay at Cannes is also a head-scratcher; reading positive reviews doesn’t help, it just confuses me more, making me think I watched a totally different movie. I wanted to like this as I am a huge fan of both Spielberg and Hawn, but nope, this one is a big swing and a miss for me. I didn’t even enjoy the John Williams score! I give this 1/2 star for the interesting beginning and the few nice shots sprinkled throughout, but that’s it.
