Second-Hand Hearts

Second Hand Hearts is a very classy-looking movie. Haskell Wexler is the cinematographer, and he transforms the gauchest milieus into elegant tableaux. But Harris and Blake don't mesh with Ashby's innately cool style. [18 May 1981]

He's a washout at the car wash, she's a waitress with a dream. Together they motor off to Tinseltown in search of fame, glory and, maybe, Bert Convy. It's a country-western love story that'll tug at those heartstrings, folks, and, no, I'm not making any of this up. [21 June 1985, p.6C]

Second Hand Hearts needs far more than a change of title to save it from oblivion. It needs a screenplay that doesn't treat its characters as if they were waste baskets to be filled with prose that any self-respecting writer would hide from his best friend.

This Ashby-directed film suffers most from its too-simple plot, but the often-indecipherable Texas accents that Blake and Harris lay on don't help matters much.