The Straight Story

The Straight Story. David Lynch. 1999. ⚃

I bought all of Lynch’s movies the other year on bluray. Of course I’d seen them all before, but I thought it’d be fun to watch them all again. And, indeed, it was.

Fun, that is.

But I resisted watching The Elephant Man, and I didn’t want to watch The Straight Story, either. The first because I seemed to remember it being kinda bad, and the second, because I seemed to remember that it wasn’t… all that interesting? It’s Lynch’s Disney movie?

So why not watch them both the same evening?

[forty minutes pass]

This is just the heart-warmingest movie ever.

[the end]

I was totally on board for the first third of this movie. I was wondering why I didn’t remember this as a totally wonderful movie: Farnsworth is perfect as the old guy (amazing casting), and I was sobbing all over the place.

But… then it all kinda dissipated? Not that any scene in particular was bad or anything, but the momentum seemed to disappear. And this is a road movie.