X
  • 1978
  • PG
  • Paramount Pictures
  • 1 h 48 m
  • 1978
  • PG
  • Paramount Pictures
  • 1 h 48 m

Summary Due to the lack of men after the Civil War, a small western town allows a bachelorette with ulterior motives to save a horse-thief from the gallows by marrying him. They must deal with his old gang, the sheriff, the bank - and each other.

Directed By: Jack Nicholson

Written By: John Herman Shaner, Al Ramrus, Charles Shyer, Alan Mandel

  • 1978
  • PG
  • Paramount Pictures
  • 1 h 48 m
  • 1978
  • PG
  • Paramount Pictures
  • 1 h 48 m

Goin' South

Metascore Mixed or Average Based on 9 Critic Reviews
52
User Score Available after 4 ratings
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Summary Due to the lack of men after the Civil War, a small western town allows a bachelorette with ulterior motives to save a horse-thief from the gallows by marrying him. They must deal with his old gang, the sheriff, the bank - and each other.

Directed By: Jack Nicholson

Written By: John Herman Shaner, Al Ramrus, Charles Shyer, Alan Mandel

Where to Watch

Top Cast

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Critic Reviews

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Metascore
Mixed or Average Based on 9 Critic Reviews
52
22% Positive
2 Reviews
67% Mixed
6 Reviews
11% Negative
1 Review

  • All Reviews
  • Positive Reviews
  • Mixed Reviews
  • Negative Reviews

Critic Reviews

 View All
Metascore
Mixed or Average Based on 9 Critic Reviews
52
22% Positive
2 Reviews
67% Mixed
6 Reviews
11% Negative
1 Review

  • All Reviews
  • Positive Reviews
  • Mixed Reviews
  • Negative Reviews
90
Nicholson's second film as director, a wonderfully beguiling Western in which he plays a sad sack outlaw (ex-cook to Quantrill's Raiders) snatched from the gallows by Steenburgen's prim spinster (taking advantage of a special ordinance occasioned by man shortage after the Civil War), who weds him and puts him to work mining for gold. Tender, bawdy and funny in its shaggy dog ramifications.
FULL REVIEW
70
Droll, sweet-tempered and lackadaisical, it's a shaggy-dog story with Nicholson playing the shaggy dog. It turns Western conventions on their heads not out of satirical anger but simply to charm the pants off the audience. A little less coyness, and a lot more John Belushi (as a Mexican deputy), would have helped. Still, at a time when most comedy comes straight out of the bathroom, the quirky, civilized pleasures of Nicholson's film are not to be sneezed at. [09 Oct 1978, p.94]
By David Ansen FULL REVIEW
50
Nicholson's fatuous leering performance dominates the movie, and because his prankishness also comes out in the casting and directing, the movie hasn't any stabilizing force; there's nothing to balance what he's doing--no one with a strait jacket. An actor-director who prances about the screen manically can easily fool himself into thinking that his film is jumping; Nicholson jumps, all right, but the movie is inert.
By Pauline Kael FULL REVIEW
50
Neither Nicholson nor the talented Miss Steenburgen, in her film debut, could rise above the patched-together script. The promising parody of anti-mythic Westerns, and of mellerdrammers (the railroad wants to snitch Julia's land), decays into a love story whose parameters are all too narrow and all too familiar. [07 Oct 1978]
By Jay Scott FULL REVIEW
50
Picture starts off promisingly enough with Nicholson as a hapless outlaw who makes it across the border but the posse cheats and comes across after him causing his horse to faint. But it never jells, as Nicholson continues to sputter and chomp, acting more like her grandfather than a handsome roue out to overcome her virginity.
FULL REVIEW
40
Although the premise of Goin' South is clever, the story is unbelievable and, under Nicholson's first grip as a director, is unwieldy and directionless. The tale is presented in disjointed, confusing, poorly set sequences. Nicholson the actor is mildly amusing, as are some of his riotous gang members, DeVito and Belushi (the latter appearing only briefly, irrespective of his high billing). But the whole film deteriorates midway into amateurish mugging and slapstick.
FULL REVIEW
37
A bucolic sex comedy in which Nicholson the director indulges Nicholson the star an orgy of coy monkey-shines in the role of a scruffy outlaw who enters into a marriage of convenience with a demure young woman who owns a ranch and a goldmine - expires right before your eyes from a terminal case of the feebles. Goin' South is the most flat-footed comedy to collapse on the screen since Nickelodeon.
By Gary Arnold FULL REVIEW

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Details

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Production Company Paramount Pictures
Release Date Oct 6, 1978
Duration 1 h 48 m
Rating PG
Genres
Tagline Saved from the hangman, for a fate worse than death!
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Awards

Golden Globes, USA
• 1 Nomination

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