SummaryAs the film opens on an Oklahoma farm during the depression, two simultaneous visitors literally hit the Wagoneer home: a ruinous dust storm and a convertible crazily driven by Red, the missus' brother. A roguish country-western musician, he has just been invited to audition for the Grand Ole Opry, his chance of a lifetime to become a success. Ho... Read More
Directed By:Clint Eastwood
Written By:Clancy Carlile
Honkytonk Man
Metascore
Mixed or Average
50
User score
Generally Favorable
6.9
My Score
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Top Cast
Metascore
Mixed or Average
33% Positive
4 Reviews
4 Reviews
42% Mixed
5 Reviews
5 Reviews
25% Negative
3 Reviews
3 Reviews
88
It's a pleasant, unprepossessing picture of gliding charm and buoyant silliness, a fragile craft unencumbered by the weighty sophistication of camp, and it's one of the nicest surprises of the season. [17 Dec 1982]
75
This is a sweet, whimsical, low-key movie, a movie that makes you feel good without pressing you too hard.
50
A more modest, down-to-earth disappointment than Firefox, it benefits from a fair amount of incidental entertainment value, much of it supplied by a distinctive and often humorous supporting cast. [18 Dec 1982, p.C4]
50
Only charm and sentimentality could have brought the requisite magic to Clint Eastwood's Honkytonk Man; unfortunately, this well-intentioned but weak film hasn't nearly enough of either.
50
Unfortunately, the film suffers from the weak script's predictable situations and underdeveloped characters, and the pathos and cliches become hard to take, making Honkytonk Man more of a curiosity piece for followers of Eastwood than a truly compelling story.
30
Eastwood has no more singing talent than Citizen Kane's mistress, and this oh-so-well-intentioned movie takes more than two tepid hours to show us the boy becoming a man, the man achieving his dream and somebody singing Swing Low, Sweet Chariot over his grave. They'll have to come for to carry you home after this one. [27 Dec 1982, p.62]
25
A soppy songfest about a tubercular pea picker who drives to Nashville, where he hemorrhages and dies. It's unfit for human consumption. [17 Dec 1982, p.20]
User score
Generally Favorable
70% Positive
7 Ratings
7 Ratings
30% Mixed
3 Ratings
3 Ratings
0% Negative
0 Ratings
0 Ratings
Jan 31, 2022
8
It kinda meanders solidly for about ¾ of its run time, but honestly that final 30 or so minutes is outstanding. 'Honkytonk Man' isn't, at least to me, the most interesting or enjoyable for the first hour or so, with many satisfactory if meh scenes and even an odd one featuring a minor, but to my proper surprise the concluding moments of this 1982 release really do leave an imprint - I love the ending. Clint Eastwood is solid, as seemingly always, for the majority before really coming up with some big acting chops, though credit also goes to the make-up department for making him look the way his character ought to - which really sells it. Kyle Eastwood can't really act beside him, but as a child actor he brings the necessary innocence etc. It was barely a 7/10 rating from me until the conclusion, which elevates it up sizeably.
