The Thing Called Love

A pleasing trifle from Peter Bogdanovich, worth seeing if you enjoy country music -- the film has a wall-to-wall soundtrack, which I liked a lot. The film follows the romantic and musical fortunes of four would-be songwriters who immigrate to Music City; it’s sort of Singles-meets-Nashville and has some of the same juice as the Cameron Crowe and Robert Altman films. The appealing quartet is Samantha Mathis, River Phoenix (in his last film, before he expired on the street outside the Viper Room), Dermot Mulroney, and a pre-Speed Sandra Bullock. There’s plenty of local color, and the romantic complications are not entirely hackneyed. This was a low point in Bogdanovich’s career, when the film got bad reviews and a quick yank from theaters, but it’s a worthy link between The Last Picture Show and the recent, also undervalued Cat’s Meow. It’s developed a following on video and was just released on dvd. This is a good time to remind you that my number grades are a gauge of my subjective enthusiasm, and not a statement of objective worth. My enthusiasms are informed but idiosyncratic. I am not asserting that this film, for example, is somehow “better” than far more ambitious or historic films for whom I could only muster a *6* -- just so you know. (1993, dvd, n.) *7-*