Nobody's Fool

Nobody's Fool functions mostly as a character study, but it's also Benton's elegy to America's endangered small towns. It's a gem. Read full review

In Benton's able hands this authentic, engagingly humane movie evolves into a casual treasure of stolen moments, where nothing much happens and yet everything happens. Because Benton knows that life can best be found in a silent expression, a camouflaged turn of a phrase, and in the simple acts of compassion that make the next day worth waking up for. Read full review

Nobody's Fool is so eloquently straightforward, it practically sings to the soul. A story about very real people caught in the everyday woes and worries of a small Upstate New York town, it shows the kind of character traits, tics and from-the-heart chatter you wish there was more of in the movies. Read full review

It's a simple-seeming but luminous movie, an intelligent, very funny and dead-on small-town comedy-drama adapted and directed by Robert Benton from Richard Russo's gently humorous 1993 novel. [13 Jan 1995, p.C]

No doubt about it, Nobody's Fool is endowed with a lot of cinematic smarts - from the star's poise to the director's wiles to a lambent cameo from the late Jessica Tandy. And those smarts, part trickster's magic and part craftsman's guile, work their transforming art to perfection - seldom has a shallow pool looked so refreshingly deep. [13 Jan 1995]

Nobody’s Fool shines with intelligence and grace and the natural light of fine moviemaking. Like a shot of superior whiskey, it’s a sharp comfort in the grayness of winter Read full review

If Nobody's Fool is often heartbreaking in its sense of loss, it is also hopeful in the strength of its emotions and the sheer beauty of its performances. Read full review

By giving his movie a very effective realistic look, by helping his actors to shape strongly believable performances, even when they are doing implausible things, Benton lends credence to these inspirational fibs. Read full review

Director Benton's style in Nobody's Fool is controlled, almost austere, but it allows the actors to breathe familiar life into their roles. It's a fresh air they breathe, a rejuvenating one that affirms the virtues of a simple story about everyday people. Read full review

The story, written by Benton from the novel by Richard Russo, unfolds according to its own logic. It has the patience to listen to silences. Above all, it benefits from the confidence of Newman's performance. He is not hammering the points home, not marching from one big scene to another, but simply living on the screen. Read full review

Nobody's Fool is about as sublime a motion picture as is likely to come out of Hollywood. With a structure that contravenes the norm, this film concentrates on character first, letting the plot fall naturally into place. Situations are forced on neither the film's inhabitants nor on those in the audience. Read full review

Newman is an American classic, one of the few actors Hollywood has allowed to age and deepen. He and Nobody's Fool don't so much shine as glow softly and steadily. [13 Jan 1995, p.73]

Some writer-directors would have squeezed pathos from this story until the corn turned to pone, especially in a post-Christmas release. Writer-director Robert Benton (Places in the Heart) keeps a gentler grip on the proceedings and makes 10 times the impact. [13 Jan 1995, p.1F]

Nobody's Fool boasts the kind of low-key realism on which Newman made his reputation but that, in these days of high-decibel, high-concept fantasy, has become a lost art. [13 Jan 1995, p.3]

Benton and novelist Russo are particularly good at bringing out the grit and grace of small towns, where concern for one's neighbors and sheer nosiness are two sides of the same coin. But above all, Nobody's Fool is another triumph for one of our greatest and most enduring movie actors. [13 Jan 1995, p.3E]

Small-town setting, big-time charm. Paul Newman is no fool for taking this perfect-fit role as a hard-luck construction worker who reunites with his son. [03 Feb 1995, p.4D]

Nobody's Fool centers on a hard-luck guy named Sullivan, played by Newman with a wisdom and panache that recall the best work of his career. Read full review

Nobody's Fool is an actors' showcase and a dramatist's doodle. But what an actor. Newman's eloquent, understated portrayal of a jovial heel ranks among his greatest. [13 Jan 1995, p.8]

Nobody's Fool is a gentle, flavorsome story of a loose-knit, dysfunctional family whose members essentially include every glimpsed citizen of a small New York town. Fronted by a splendid performance from Paul Newman as a spirited man who has made nothing of his life, Robert Benton's character-driven film is sprinkled with small pleasures; the dramatic developments here don't take place in the noisy, calamitous manner that is customary these days. Read full review

Mesmerising, magical portrait of smalltown America, dominated by a performance from Paul Newman so outstanding it must surely make him front-runner to hoist the Best Actor statuette come Oscar night. Read full review

Whatever its faults, it is humble, adult fare and welcome in this age of grandiose children's games. Read full review

For better and for worse, it's still a Hollywood movie (and a white boys' movie to boot), but one with a more alert eye and feeling for American life than most of its competitors. Read full review

Nobody's Fool was written and directed by Robert Benton, and he does a better job with his camera than with his pen. The town of North Bath is perfectly captured with rusting signage, a classic diner and bar, and dirty snow everywhere. We never feel like Newman is slumming in this town, and that is also a measure of his performance. Read full review

Nobody's Fool belongs to that hoary but no longer frequently seen genre, the slice of life. And for at least some of its duration, Benton - creator of more oleaginous cuts of celluloid, like Places in the Heart - slices keenly and artfully. We get a good sense of the nature of existence in snowbound North Bath, N.Y., where the advantages and shortcomings of small-town life are sometimes hard to tell apart. Read full review

Nobody's Fool is funny at times and as cuddly as an old teddy bear. But this movie is being taken far too seriously in some circles. Read full review

Nobody's Fool is to be commended just for acknowledging the existence of old age in the context of youth-obsessed pop culture; more importantly, the film is refreshingly frank about the everyday struggles of many senior citizens in an era of fractured families and a disappearing social safety net. Read full review

As always with Newman, we never quite feel he could have been as bad a guy as the script insists he was, he remains the reason to see Nobody's Fool. The film's various difficulties inevitably fade from memory, but his performance lingers, as the great ones always do. Read full review

Despite its star, Nobody's Fool remains a mediocre film. Adapted by director Robert Benton from Richard Russo's novel, the movie is sluggish and gray, too often using banal talk show psychology to resolve its characters' issues. [13 Jan 1995, p.4G]