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| Murphy's Romance | 
 enlarge | Director: Martin Ritt
Actors: Sally Field, James Garner, Brian Kerwin, Corey Haim, Dennis Burkley
Studio: Sony Pictures
Category: DVD
List Price: $9.95
Buy New: $4.11
You Save: $5.84 (59%)
New (50) Used (19) from $4.11
Avg. Customer Rating:  66 reviews
Sales Rank: 1348
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Widescreen
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Subtitled), Spanish (Subtitled), Portuguese (Subtitled), Georgian (Subtitled), Chinese (Subtitled), Thai (Subtitled)
Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Number Of Items: 1
Running Time: 107
Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1
DVD Layers: 1
DVD Sides: 2
Picture Format: Array
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 7.5 x 5.3 x 0.6
MPN: COLD06499D
ISBN: 0767827813
UPC: 043396064997
EAN: 9780767827812
ASIN: 0767827813
Theatrical Release Date: January 31, 1986
Release Date: May 2, 2000
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Brand New and Factory Sealed Item Fast Shipping
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| Customer Reviews:
 Eternal Hope for Love March 23, 2008
When you're down and out, knowing love is only found in the imagination, this movie will give you hope. It addresses many topics of today's life: single parenting, divorce, dating again, small town gossip, starting over, and more. It is definitely a "chick flick" but men tend to enjoy it, too. Sally Fields and James Garner definitely have the chemistry on screen. This is one of my favorites.
Love it! February 26, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Murphy's Romance
I saw this movie years back when it first came out. I loved it then and still do. It's one of those movies that stands the test of time. Sally Fields and James Garner make an unlikely but powerhouse romantic couple. You laugh and maybe even shed a few tears, but you're left with a 'feel-good' feeling long after watching. I would highly recommend it.
One in a Million January 20, 2008
Sally Fields hits a homerun in this story of a divorcee' moving to a ranch to start a buisness training horses, in a small town to try and make a home for herself and her son. The trials that she has to face include: no money and her business not starting out to well, her ex-husband showing up - out of money and ready to cause trouble - and the owner of the drugstore in town becoming more that just a friend. Fields makes the character of Emma come alive in a way that is relatable to any woman who has been hit hard and then made themselves get up and start all over again. This is the perfect love story that travels through the different generations and always rises to the top. A must see.
 He Likes Her, He Really Likes Her January 15, 2008
It's always interesting when you watch a film for a second time and have a totally different reaction than you did the first time around. I disliked MURPHY'S ROMANCE the first time I saw it, for reasons that are/were actually quite valid. But I am a big enough fan of the two leads (James Garner and Sally Field) to give it another whirl--so I did. I still saw some problems, it's contrived and a bit formulaic. But this time out, I found those contrivances a whole lot easier to take.
It may have simply been the title that had me wary initially. I am generally suspicious of movies with titles that follow the naming patter of "X's Y" or "The Y of X"--with "X" being one of the lead characters' name, of course, and the Y being whatever person, place, thing or notion that character happens to HAVE. Effectively, the filmmakers are introducing the main character or characters in the work's very title and telling you something VERRRY significant about him/her in the process. You could call it a kind of foreshadowing. To me, it's always seemed a little like cheating. Take this film. You know going in that there's this guy, right?, and his name is, like, MURPHY, you know, and he's got a romance,see? And oh, since there's a picture of a spunky, pert Sally Field on the poster (or cover), well, that's got to her--she's the one who provides the romance!
Saves time on character and plot development, I guess you could say. But you could also say that you'd have to be a real sourpuss to hold that against as genial a movie as THE ROMANCE OF MURPHY, I mean, MURPHY'S ROMANCE (English is such a funny language, n'est-ce pas?). You know that the curmudgeonly, but aimiable widower Murphy Jones (Garner) is going to fall for and win the heart of the sprightly-but-tough young divorcee Emma Moriarty (Field) by the movie's end. They're both such endearing souls, him a flinty, small town curmudgeon--and a liberal to boot, which must make him a real eccentric in this Colorado town. And she's just as flinty and equally tough--and is more than a match for him in the school of hard knocks department. She was married to a bum who left her broke and without much in the way of prospects until she remembers that she was a darn fine horse trainer as a girl and decides to move to rural Colorado to realize her dream.
This much is formulaic enough, and what happens next is equally predictable. While the overly cautious May/December pair flirt and parry a bit, fate brings them the requisite complications, the most obvious one being Emma's ex Bobby Jack, as big a ne'er-do-well as Hollywood has ever produced, but, like everybody else in the movie, still kinda aimiable and good-hearted (in that ne'er-do-well kind of way, of course). Well, like I said, the movie is called *MURPHY'S* ROMANCE, so we know who's gonna win out in the end. I don't think a SPOILER WARNING is necessary here.
So Murphy and Bobby Jack start to spar over Emma, who in turn spars with both of them. It's all very cute, and (this is where your own frame of mind comes in) just a tad contrived. The seasoned and reliable old hand and the irrepressable, but impossible younger man banter, they engage in verbal one-upmanship and psychological shadow-boxing. They even cutely, and in dizzying rapid succession, cut in on each other's dance with Emma at the local hoe-down. Emma gets miffed, and the two men (again cutely) end up dancing together. ("I'll lead," says Garner significantly).
But what is a bit surprising--or at least for me--was the lack of a big blow up between the two men or between Emma and her ex. There are some dust-ups and some harsh words, but nothing that ever comes to blows--even when Bobby Jack accuses Murph of jumping "his" wife's bones. But ultimately, everybody's too sweetly disposed deep down to keep up the enmity for very long. And that's admittedly a bit refreshing. These basically good-hearted folks aren't much up for fighting, and when you get right down to it that's jes' fine. Emma's choice is obvious, but fate is kind enough to make matters evensimpler. The Bobby Jack situation is decisively resolved with the arrival of a kind of rustic Deus ex machina (the machina being an old pick-up and the "Deus" coming in the form of an ex-girlfriend with TWINS in tow).
Nosing around the film websites on the Net, I found original reviews of this movie by Roger Ebert and Vincent Canby, among others. Canby found it patently "phony" and like "a pilot for a TV series that would get axed in mid-season." That's what I might have said the first time around. Ebert, on the other hand, was much more generous. Sure the film was predictable, but he liked the way it "it looks at those characters, and listens to them, and allows them to live in a specific time and place." That's what I picked up the second time through, and, why, even ultimately--as manipulative as I knew the film to be--I decided I liked the darn thing after all and was glad I gave it a second chance.
 Murphy's Romance December 25, 2007
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
This movie is more real than a lot of movies Hollywood puts out. It touched my heart. A quite, calm, sweet movie with no killing no cursing just a nice human instrest story. I give it 5 stars and will watch it again & again.
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