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The outlaw buddy drama grossed three times its budget upon its 1991 release, and earned both Davis and Susan Sarandon Oscar nominations.
Key Points
- Geena Davis is looking back on the reception to her 1991 classic outlaw buddy drama, Thelma & Louise.
- Davis remembered “two editorials denouncing the movie” as a “horrible idea” full of “male bashing.”
- But that criticism didn’t “impact its success,” Davis proudly noted on an episode of the Armchair Expert podcast.
Thelma & Louise is remembered today as a feminist classic. But star Geena Davis remembers that it wasn’t alway so warmly received.
“A lot of the reviewers had a problem with it,” Davis recalled on Monday in an interview on the Armchair Expert podcast.
“A week after it came out, [Susan Sarandon] and I were on the cover of Time. But there were two editorials denouncing the movie about ‘how bad this is, this is a horrible idea,’” the actress continued. “A lot of reviews were like, ‘This is male bashing.’”
Written by Callie Khouri and directed by Ridley Scott, Thelma & Louise follows two best friends on a road trip throughout the American South and Southwest that becomes far more action-packed than they bargained for. After Thelma (Davis) is brutally attacked by a man she meets at a bar (Timothy Carhart), Louise (Sarandon) shoots him — half in defense of her friend, half out of pure rage over his actions.
Thus sets off a strange and exhilarating twist on the buddy comedy, the road movie, and the Western that dives head first into the battle of the sexes.
Contrary to the claims Davis remembered being expressed by the editorials impugning the film for its apparent misandry, the actress argued, "There’s seven important male characters."
There was also the “horrible message,” per critics, that “‘now the women have guns.’ So it was really frowned on. But it didn’t impact its success. People really liked it and it did well,” the Oscar winner said.
Indeed, no amount of grousing could get in Thelma & Louise’s way. The film earned back nearly three times its budget at the box office, and the spread of contemporary reviews of the film still available to read online reveals a good deal of high praise.
Roger Ebert wrote that while the film “does indeed contain its share of rural visual extravaganza and lost railroad blues, [it[ has a heart, too.” In the pages of Entertainment Weekly, Owen Gleiberman wrote that Davis and Sarandon “lend the film’s shamelessly operatic finale — a love-it-or-hate-it climax if ever there was one — a surreal conviction, even as part of you is thinking, ‘Gimme a break!’”
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The film also vaulted both Sarandon and Davis to awards season glory, as both actresses received Oscar nominations for their performances. But both ultimately lost to that year’s juggernaut — The Silence of the Lambs — which won Jodie Foster the Academy Award for Best Actress.
You can watch Davis’ full interview on the Armchair Expert podcast above.
Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly
