| The Morning After | | Cast : | Jane Fonda, Jeff Bridges, Raul Julia | | Director : | Sidney Lumet | | Studio : | Warner Home Video | | Format : | Color, Closed-captioned, Widescreen | | Released Date : | December 25, 1986 | | DVD Released Date : | August 30, 2005 | | Language : | English (Dubbed), English (Subtitled), Spanish (Subtitled), French (Subtitled) | | Audience Rating : | R (Restricted) | | | BUY THIS DVD FROM AMAZON |
Customer Reviews
| Rating |  | | Date | August 03, 2005 | | Summary | Fonda Powerful as Stone Drunk Waking Up to Murder | Content
 | "The Morning After" (directed by Sidney Lumet) is not a great film, but it does contain great performances, particularly from Jane Fonda as Alex Sternbergen, an alcoholic "never-was" actress who wakes up in a strange man's bed after a drunken binge. Even worse, the man has a knife in his back and she can't remember what happened. Things get worse when the dead body keeps reappearing to terrorize her.
The suspense is fairly well placed, if at times heavy-handed, the plot thickening when a sympathetic former cop, Turner Kendall (Jeff Bridges) comes onto the scene who may or may not be trustworthy. Fonda's scene with Bridges over an impromptu dinner is simply superb where she says, "I used to be an actress," her biting sarcasm mixed with self-pitying pathos and bile.
Like other reviewers, I believe the film is less a suspense film (although it aims for that) than the story of two wounded souls inexorably drawn together. On that level, it works admirably and there are moments of genuine tension as well. The unappetizing aspect is the cinematography and the unappealing apartments with Fonda keeping rank food and an unnecessary number of mayonnaise jars in her fridge. Raul Julia appears as Fonda's hairdresser and ex-husband and Kathy Bates has a cameo as an artist living in the same building as the murdered man.
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| Rating | | | Date | July 06, 2005 | | Summary | Fonda is Fantastic! | Content
| Jane Fonda gives a fantastic performance in this movie - worthy of an Oscar nomination. |
| Rating | | | Date | June 10, 2005 | | Summary | Jane "Best Actress" Fonda ... | Content
| This movie was released in 1986 with little fanfare, though it was directed by Sidney Lumet and starred former superstar Jane Fonda; it was simply a failure. Yet somehow Jane managed to receive her umpteenth Best Actress Academy Award nomination, the fluke to end all flukes.
The movie itself isn't very difficult to watch, though at times it's extremely hokey and tongue-in-cheek. Admittedly, however, it does have its exciting, interesting moments.
Jane's Best Actress nomination was enough for me to pre-order the DVD (having already seen the movie on VHS format). If you look at the four other women that were nominated with Jane in 1986, you'll find that it was another one of those "slow" years, and Jane MAY have received her nomination simply because there was no one else to nominate. This isn't Jane's or any woman's fault; in the 1980s there was an astonishing lack of strong, meaty roles for women in movies. For the most part this situation still exists today, though in the 2000s it has bettered dramatically; just see "Monster," "Million Dollar Baby," and "Being Julia" to see what I mean.
"The Morning After" is not a "hit" movie, and its DVD release will not set rooms on fire with astounding sales figures. And it's most likely only being released because of Jane's recent success with "Monster-in-Law." But as a movie fan, it might be important to continue to support the on-going cause for better roles for women. And by buying (for cheap, hopefully) "The Morning After," you'll be doing just that. |
| Rating | | | Date | May 18, 2005 | | Summary | My GirlfriendTold Me She Used To Go To Bed With Dead Guys! T | Content
| Jane Fonda plays a washed up has been actress in this movie with a very bad drinking problem. She wakes up one morning next to a guy with a knife in his chest and she can't remember what happened the night before. Then she is on the run when she meets a sympathetic young man played by Jeff Bridges.Unlike Hitchcock movies when the violins start to screetch on the soundtrack then you knw something VERY BAD is going to happen. The violins in this movie play pretty loud but nothing happens. I figured out "Whodunnit" in the first 30 minutes of this film and then spent the next hour trying to figure out if Fonda's hair was a wig or did she get her own hair bleached blonde?I give this movie 5 stars because I liked the look of the loft where the dead guy lives. |
| Rating | | | Date | March 19, 2005 | | Summary | Gimme a break | Content
| Jane Fonda is a drunk down-and-out actress who wakes up one morning in bed next to a man with a knife sticking out of him. Jeff Bridges, an ex-police officer, helps her figure out what happened. I won't reveal it, but I found it difficult getting remotely interested in this movie. |
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