On Golden Pond

Release Year: 1981
Review: A quiet story about an elderly retired professor and his wife whose relaxing summer at their lake house is interrupted by an unexpected stay of a precocious young teen. This was Henry Fonda's last role and he won an Oscar for it along with Katharine Hepburn. Henry Fonda plays an old curmudgeon perfectly, managing to be just witty enough in his ill-tempered jabs to be charming in his own respect. I can't say the same for Hepburn's character whose overly dramatic, verbose and batty was more irritating than endearing.

It took awhile for the film to grow onto me. At first the obsessing about death and the old bickering couple was draining. Listening about old people moan about being old is a bit of a bore. When the boy is introduced into the story things started to look up a bit more. Instead of being a melancholy tale of dying, it became a tender story about a grumpy old man warming to a rambunctious youth. While it was heartwarming, there was very little to the story. There was never much tension between the boy and the family. There was only one brief scene where there was any friction whatsoever. There was a secondary plot of a strife in the relationship between the elderly Fonda and his screen daughter (Jane Fonda), but this was not fleshed out at all and she was hardly in the movie. Before any real friction was ever shown, they had wrapped up that relationship in a nice convenient package. The entire film had a very "Lifetime movie of the week" feel to it, complete with an overly melodramatic score and needlessly long shots of nature. It was a pleasant film on aging and relationships, but it lacked any real meat and didn't push any emotional buttons.
Rating: 3/5