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Rating:  - 2.5 stars out of 4
The Bottom Line:
A mediocre chicks-on-the-run film with inexplicably bizarre scenes (a passing biker blowing marijuana smoke into a car trunk which houses a captured cop?), Thelma and Louise may have an iconic last scene but it's not an interesting, enjoyable, or particularly-good film.
Rating:  - Lucky Man
That would be me watching this movie. Because I didn't attempt to see it through some ideological filter. Of course it's not a "feminist" tract - bear in mind that that's merely how some PR types tried to market it. Which goes to show how absurd marketing is. If it's anything even remotely relating to "feminism," it's a cautionary tale advising women not to leap blindly into something they don't understand. But of course it's not about that either. It's a movie about two women who make a series of disastrous choices that literally brings them to the edge of a cliff with nowhere to go but over. It's also a movie that shows the dark side of "freedom." Yes, Thelma and Louise attain a level of carefree freedom most people will never experience. And they pay a terrible price for it. And it's a movie about contrasts, showing men as callous users (via the Brad Pitt character) and also as caring helpers (via the Harvey Keitel character). But above all else, it's a movie about two humans getting caught up in a maddening spiral of events that have taken on a life of their own - a perfect parable for what's happening all over the world, day in and day out. You set something in motion and from that moment on it's beyond your control. Thelma and Louise's only "triumph" is their acknowledgment that they have done this to themselves. They don't say so of course; but their final action says it for them. In that sense, this movie bears some resemblance to one of my other nominees for greatest movie of all time - The Bridge on the River Kwai, wherein the Alec Guiness character finally realizes his great mistake; but realizes it too late to save himself. Just like Thelma and Louise.
Rating:  - Feminism = stupidity + suicide? I don't think so!
To describe this movie as feminist is ridiculous. The female leads don't use their heads, operate on pure and unchecked emotion (mostly fear-based), seem to feel alive only when they're exhibiting the same level of violence that the cartoon-character-evil-men they cross paths with have exhibited towards them, and finally "triumph" by committing suicide, albeit in a "romantic" fashion by driving their convertible, top-down, over a cliff at the Grand Canyon while they clasp hands in hysterical "sisterhood."
Give me a f^%$#&^g break here, people. Feminisim is about responsibility every bit as much as it's about freedom. I don't know about your world, but in mine it's necessary to have a functioning brain, to be capable of rational thought and right action, to know when to ask for help and when to give it, and to be able to exercise some impulse control and deal effectively with unfair and sometimes even abusive treatment. Because it's not a perfect world. Not for men, and not for women. Deal.
OK, the movie seems to posit that these two - especially the Geena Davis character - are so incapacitated due to the abuse they've suffered that they're not capable of any of that. Gee, sounds like the excuse often given by male murderers and rapists for the horrible things they do. And it just doesn't wash.
Feminism does not equal intellectual vacuity and man-hating - although to accuse this film of man hating seems laughable. There are hardly any "men" in it, just stereotypes of men who exist merely to give the female leads an excuse to dig themselves an ever-deeper hole of violence and idiocy leading to suicide.
Yes, suicide. Death. That's triumph? That's a feminist statement? Not in my book.
This movie isn't man-hating because there aren't any men in it, only cartoon characters. But it IS woman-hating because it never even entertains the possibility that women who've been treated with violence and gross unfairness, women who've had their humanity stifled, might still truly triumph by undertaking the mostly interior, unglamorous fight for their own humanity and might truly win by living out life - yes, LIVING it out - on their own terms: creatively, lovingly, intelligenty, compassionately, productively, with self-awareness, as adults, in this imperfect world. That's real strength, and that's real feminism. The two-hour-long temper-tantrum the female leads in this movie engage in is not.
This movie panders to spoiled, gutless American women who enjoy their "victim" role and who refuse to do the work of taking responsibility for their own lives, as adults, in one of the richest countries on earth. I suggest these women go to a place like Somalia and see what the women there have to deal with daily, and then come back and see if they still see a self-indulgent, self-pitying, mindless movie like this one in quite the same way.
Rating: - Exellent
This movie was exellent. It was brand new so there was nothing wrong with it.
Rating: - Couldn't Help Rooting for Them
It is impossible to defend everything Thelma and Louise did as events unraveled. Never mind illegalities; some of their misdeeds were deliberate and just plain wrong.
However, I consistently wanted them to make it. If Louise was not going to turn her back on Thelma, then neither was I. Louise was the brains behind the outfit. Thelma was naive and less-than-intelligent, and she cost Louise dearly many times. No one could have blamed Louise for letting Thelma go in hopes that she (Lousie) could still make it.
Louise's love and friendship for Thelma turned out to be more fierce than her instinct for survival. Who wouldn't want to be on their team?
Another compelling thing about this film is the go-for-broke mentality. As their situations deteriorate, they start pushing boundaries and limits in ways that most of us never will. It becomes impossible to look away.
If you have only ever watched this on cable, you should rent this film at least once to see the missing scene between the stranded desert cop and the Rastafarian. It offers comic relief in a tale laced with desperation. By the way, the cop was played by the actor that portrayed Demi Moore's boyfriend in GI Jane.
Michael Madsen (Virginia's brother) would have been tempting for a lot of us girls. Hats off to Louise for realizing that to a large extent he was only pursuing her because he could feel her slipping away.
I am still hoping that somehow, some way Thelma and Louise made it. In film all things are possible.
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