Critic Reviews

Urban Cowboy is the most entertaining, most perceptive commercial American movie of the year to date. Here is a tough-talking, softhearted romantic melodrama that sees a world that is far more bleak than the movie, or the characters in it, ever have time to acknowledge.

James Bridges's film, which he co-authored with Aaron Latham, has a mood and rhythm of its own -- it's in no hurry to knock your socks off. You have to get to know the characters, just as it takes time for them to get to know each other. Then suddenly, when Bud and Sissy's premature marriage starts to fall apart, you find that you care, and the spell is cast. Bridges shows an extraordinary gift for directing actors, and he gets a string of marvelous, fresh performances. [09 June 1980, p.84]

John Travolta stars as a Texas construction worker who spends his nights chasing a woman and the cowboy myth in a huge honky-tonk bar. Debra Winger is a standout as the object of Travolta's anger and affections. [11 July 1980, p.8]

Director James Bridges has ably captured the atmosphere of one of the most famous chip-kicker hangouts of all: Gilley’s Club on the outskirts of Houston.

Only a couple years removed from his screen super-success in Saturday Night Fever, Travolta struts his way through Urban Cowboy’s modern-West parable about machismo, cowboy manqué, and mechanical bulls. Travolta captures some of the confusion of a little big man on the new prairie, Debra Winger provides a vixenish challenge to his manhood, and Scott Glenn plays the guy in the figurative black cowboy hat.

At no time is Urban Cowboy especially well-directed - Bridges, director of The China Syndrome and The Paper Chase, has yet to learn where to put a camera and when to move it. But the performances are so fresh, the dialogue so prickly and arid, and the milieu observed with such accuracy, that one's reservations regarding the cinematography, editing and a raft of other technical matters are held in check. [07 June 1980]

Unapologetically trashy, Urban Cowboy is a virtual pageant of high redneck style—there are lots of bootleg trousers, halter tops, shag haircuts, and feather-brimmed Stetsons—and Winger is fun as the unapologetically trashy gal who just wants to bag herself a real cowboy. Unfortunately, Urban Cowboy is dull one time too often to qualify as entertaining kitsch.

The film badly lacks a central narrative hook. It is too obviously a starring vehicle, and - unlike Saturday Night Fever, which did present some insights into a subculture - its major events are crudely imposed on the setting. In fact, the film's virtues derive not from Travolta at all, but from Bridges' obvious enjoyment of the country milieu, and the fine performances he wins from Travolta's co-stars. Debra Winger, as his wife, lends her part far more spirit and sympathy than the writing deserves; but the trump card is Scott Glenn as the villain, looking uncannily like a new Eastwood.

It's a little like watching Hsing-hsing and Ling-ling attempting to mate, to see John Travolta and Debra Winger, as the simple couple in Urban Cowboy, spend over two hours trying to find a modus vivendi in a mobile home. They're sweet and it's amusing that they have so much trouble doing the obvious, but after a while you get exasperated and wish they would just figure it out and do it.

The picture is scrappily edited, and the director seems willing to do almost anything for an immediate effect. It's only in the best scenes that satire and sultriness work together.