The Best Little Whore House in Texas Movie
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The Best Fiddling Whorehouse in Texas
If I were asked what image dominates "The Best Footling Whorehouse In Texas," the honest answer would accept to exist: Dolly Parton'due south plunging neckline. I am non trying to exist cute. The awesome swell of her wondrous bosom dominates every scene Dolly appears in, and that includes just about every scene in the picture. West.C. Fields, the quondam scene-stealer, rebelled against appearing on screen with an animal, a child, or a plunging neckline, on the not unreasonable grounds that audiences would not exist looking at him. Fields could have appeared incognito in "Whorehouse," as, indeed, Burt Reynolds occasionally does.
The puzzling matter virtually the Parton decolletage is that so little is made of so much. You'd think there would be sizzling chemistry between Parton and Reynolds, who are two of my favorite movie sex activity symbols simply considering they always seem and so full of skillful cheer. Just that isn't the case here. They're great looking, they grinning a lot, they've been provided with good dialogue, but somehow they seem a little bored with each other, as if their affair has been going on a piffling too long; they're a happy old cheatin' couple. There is some passion in the movie, but it'due south concentrated in two scenes where Dolly is absent. In both of them, Reynolds lets loose with a not-stop cussing barrage, chewing out a foppish Telly interviewer (Dom De Luise) and a slippery governor (Charles Durning). Dolly never actually gets to allow go, and the limitless exuberance she displayed in "Nine to Five" seems equally tightly corseted hither equally her costumes are.
What'due south the problem? I think perchance the movie'southward story got misplaced somewhere in the centre of the motion picture'southward legend. The best little whorehouse of the movie's title was a legendary Texas brothel named the Chicken Ranch, which was immortalized first past generations of immature Texans and later in a Broadway play by Larry Rex and Peter Masterson. Whorehouses, Texas ones included, are non exactly very nice places, simply the whorehouse in this movie well-nigh seems similar a refuge for wayward girls. The story has been cleaned up and so carefully to showcase Parton and Reynolds that the scandal has been lost; the motion picture has been turned into a defense of free enterprise and a hymn to romance.
That'south too bad. I kept waiting for Dolly Parton to be sexy in this flick, and she never was. She was cheerful, spunky, energetic, angry, sad, and loyal, but she was never sexy not even in bed. Her feelings for Reynolds seemed to be largely therapeutic, and I believe there were even times when they discussed the nature of their relationship. Since simply the mere word "relationship" is profoundly destructive to eroticism and sexuality, we're a little baffled to see the madam and the sheriff turned into the sort of couple that discusses itself in first person articles for Cosmo. This is carried so far that Parton'southward only reference to her bosom (indeed, the only moment in the motion-picture show when anyone deigns to even observe it) is about her problems "luggin' these effectually." It's all so affair-of-fact, it'southward asexual.
Parton and Reynolds are pleasant enough in "Whorehouse," and we expect that from two such likable actors. Dom De Luise is wildly improbable and distractingly bizarre as the Telly investigative reporter who wants to close down the Chicken Ranch. Charles Durning has a lot of fun with a sly song-and-dance routine. Lois Nettleton has a thankless role as Reynolds's "other" mistress (we never do know what to make of their relationship, which must have been mangled in the editing). At that place are a few funny jokes, some raunchy one-liners, some mostly forgettable songs ready to completely forgettable choreography, and then in that location is Dolly Parton. If they ever requite Dolly her freedom and stop packaging her so antiseptically, she could exist terrific. Just Dolly and Burt and "Whorehouse" never go beyond the concept stage in this picture show.
Roger Ebert
Roger Ebert was the picture critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.
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The Best Picayune Whorehouse in Texas (1982)
114 minutes
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