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MPAA Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Media: DVD |
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Editorial Review:
Dedicated fans of Robert Altman will want to check out this drowsy Southern comedy, which is shot through with the director's feel for location and his musical sense of storytelling. Non-Altman fanatics might want to tread more carefully. Cookie's Fortune begins beautifully, as handyman Willis (Charles S. Dutton) staggers home from a blues club in the small town of Holly Springs, Mississippi. In the wee hours of a warm night, he has an affectionate chat with elderly matriarch Jewel Mae "Cookie" Orcutt (the grand Patricia Neal) and the gentle history of their friendship is sketched in a few brief exchanges. Soon enough, Cookie has checked out of this world to join her dear departed husband, prompting her nieces to make the suicide look like a murder---to protect the dubious family name, of course. They are the local drama diva (Glenn Close), a Scarlett O'Hara in her own mind, and her dreamy sister (Julianne Moore), who ain't quite right in the head. Will Willis be blamed for the murder? Will the inheritance go to the nieces? Will Liv Tyler and Chris O'Donnell find a place to express their lust? None of these questions is especially burning, and Altman doesn't seem terribly anxious about the answers. Instead, he aims for a particular kind of laid-back quirky southern comedy, unevenly filtered through his screen of sour irony. Like a jazzman blowing improv, some of this works and some of it doesn't. Speaking of music, the film boasts a nifty R&B soundscape devised by former Eurythmics man David Stewart, with a boost from blues belter Ruby Wilson. --Robert Horton
Cookie's Fortune [Region 2] Reviews:
Cookie's Fortune 
2008-09-30 - Great DVD. Watched it a number of times. All the characters are interesting.
Altman and a fine ensemble cast make a memorable movie. Charles S. Dutton excels 
2008-02-21 - Says lawyer Jack Palmer to Emma Duval, explaining the fate of her long gone father, a man she was told years ago had died while doing missionary work in Africa after he'd left his family. "He died alright, about four years later, somewhere down in Alabama in a button factory accident. Seems the hole poker machine broke loose and fell on him. They say he had 273 holes in him before they could get it off."
After all that Emma and her friend Willis Richland have experienced in Robert Altman's Cookie's Fortune, it seems perfectly natural when Emma cries out in exasperation, "Willis, what is wrong with all these people?"
The important point is that they all are part of a movie of great ease and geniality. Cookie's Fortune may be a little sentimental, perhaps, but it is so sweet-natured and natural, and so skillfully presented, that I think the film ranks among Altman's most accomplished works...even if what powers it is an old lady blowing her brains out.
Jewel Mae Orcutt -- Cookie (Patricia Neal) - is aging and increasingly infirm, and she longs for her deceased husband, Buck. When she decides to use one of Buck's pistols to join him, she sets off the avarice of her niece, Camille Dixon (Glenn Close), who pulls along her slow-witted sister, Cora Duval (Julianne Moore). Camille is determined that no hint of a suicide will scandalize the family name, so she makes things look like a burglary gone bad. And, unintentionally, makes it look as if Willis Richland (Charles S. Dutton), a close friend of Cookie's who had worked around the house for her, must have done the deed. Well, there's no way Emma Duval (Liv Tyler) an unconventional young woman who is seriously estranged from her mother, Cora, and her aunt, is going to buy that. In fact, no one, even the local cops, believes that Willis would have burglarized and shot Cookie. For the next hour and a half we're going to take part in Altman's gentle examination of the people in this little cotton-growing town of Holly Springs, Mississippi. We're going to learn how to clean catfish, listen to the blues and, a little off camera, how to make love standing up. We'll encounter Camille's obsession with propriety and look aghast at her firm direction (and rewriting) of Wilde's Salome as a church play for Easter. We're going to see how skilled Lyle Lovett is at gutting a catfish and peeping into Liv Tyler's window at night. We're going to learn a lot about family relationships, even the more informally blessed kind. Most of all, perhaps, we're to learn just how much friendship and family can mean, especially when it's served up with such skill and off-beat humor by Altman and screenwriter Ann Rapp. And as good as all the actors in this ensemble cast are, Charles S. Dutton stands out. He gives a fine performance brimming with likeability and honesty, and without a trace of Hollywood nobility. Willis Richland is a guy who has responsibilities, and that's just fine with him.
The DVD transfer is certainly watchable but could be better. There are no significant extras. The disc is wide-screen on one side, pan-and-scan on the reverse.
Coulda been much better 
2007-12-01 - 3.5 stars
I like Altman a lot on occasion (Player, Nashville, a few others), and not so much at times, like here. This could have been tighter, and despite nice turns from Close, Tyler et al, it's too stagey, and too close to its theatrical source to be a great movie.
It got boring enough by halfway that I turned it off and watched the rest later.
Altman is trying to be Faulkneresque but never quite gets there. This is the South via Hollywood, and misses the real grit and nastiness behind the lace curtains.
Nice try, though.
Altman's COOKIE: I hated it in 1999, and I still hate it in 2007! 
2007-11-11 - Meandering,lazy loafing screenplays with eccentric characters of which I am given no reason to care about or identify with put COOKIE'S FORTUNE, for my second lifetime viewing since 1999,nearly at the top of my (very small I might add) all-time most disliked films.
I can understand that certain people will like this film-especially those who enjoy small town "crazies" and director Robert Altman devotees.There is nothing wrong with that.I have enjoyed both small town "eccentrics" like in CRIMES OF THE HEART and loved Altman's GOSFORD PARK (one of my favorites).
So why did I truly hate this film? For me, eccentric characters still need to have some kind of human quality that causes me to either identify with or like or dislike.They need to have some "Raison d'etre" or "je ne sais quoi".This film had not one character that I believed for a minute.They all seemed to me to be mere caricatures.As much as I love Glenn Close and Julianne Moore, their characters I could not buy.I could have slapped Charles Dutton,Lyle Lovett,Patricia Neal,Chris O'Donnell and Liv Tyler.The whole story is so outlandish that there is nothing about it that I could begin to remotely take seriously.Even the most outlandish "Southern" screenplays that I can think of still had some character that was an anchor.This film was cut loose and set adrift into a land where lobotomies seemed to be the norm!If that was the point,then Altman succeed and it was wasted on me.
As far as giving god-like attributes to everything that any director does,Altman included, I have to say that this film had me uneasily squirming and sighing within minutes of the opening,which concluded only minutes before the climax, which I found cleverly ironic,but not enough to atone for the 100 minutes that preceded it.I am far from an "action" film afficienado. I enjoy slower-paced films.But a snails-paced screenplay with unlikeable characters who undergo no change (and throw in a lazy harmonica and strummed banjo and guitar occasionally) is just pure mayhem, and whatever Altman intended to convey here was a waste of time and film stock in my estimation.
I hated it in 1999 and I still hate it in 2007.No more viewings necessary.
Southern eccentricity
2007-04-22 - Southern gothic is a pretty tough genre to tackle, especially in movies.
But Robert Altman gave it his best with "Cookie's Fortune," a little black comedy taking place over the Easter weekend. He crammed it with eccentricity, odd twists and likably atypical characters, but the second half gets a bit carried away by self-consciousness weirdess and melodrama.
It's the day before Easter in the Southern town of Holly Springs. Pushy, self-righteous spinster Camille Dixon (Glenn Close) and her mentally challenged sister Cora (Julianne Moore) are rehearsing the Easter play, "Salome." Cora's rebellious daughter Emma (Liv Tyler) has just come back to town, as her naive boyfriend (Chris O'Donnell) has become a cop.
Meanwhile, eccenric matriarch Cookie Orcutt (Patricia Neal) has become obsessed with joining her dead hubby, Buck. So she shoots herself, minutes before her Camille arrives. Fearful of the scandal a suicide would cause ("Suicide is a disgrace! Only crazy people commit suicide!"), Camille fakes a robbery and murder scene.
There's only really one suspect: Willis (Charles S. Dutton), Cookie's handyman/cook/best pal, who lives on the premises and was polishing the guns the night before. As Camille revels in her presumed inheritance, Willis and Emma help piece together the evidence left behind -- and unwittingly unearth some peculiar family secrets.
"Cookie's Fortune" isn't a typical murder mystery. Sure, the cops are ferreting out clues and motives, but Robert Altman creates a town that basically moves along at a steady, languid pace, and nobody really gets worked up -- even a murder doesn't ruffle them enough to make them lock the cells.
And Altman stirs up plenty of black comedy and amusing dialogue ("A condition under which, in times of extreme stress, her blood will not clot properly.You ever seen her suffer from this condition?" "Unfortunately not"). He even manages to weave in some subtle commentary on family and hypocrisy as well as some racism -- nothing explicit, but you can sense it in the way Camille treats Willis.
The problem? At times Altman tries to be melodramatic, but only ends up seeming overwrought. And similarly, he piles on the down-home quirkiness too thickly at times, such as a sheriff announcing that he knows Willis is innocent "'cause... I've fished with him!"
Dutton is the heart and soul of this movie, as the lovable, friendly Willis, who finds himself arrested for a crime he didn't commit just because nobody can think of another suspect. Patricia Neal and Julianne Moore turn in solid performances as the crabby matriarch and the backward Cora (who isn't as "dumb" as she appears). Liv Tyler's performance is a bit stilted, but she evens out by the last half.
"Cookie's Fortune" is one of those movies that is enjoyable despite its flaws. It's too self-consciously quirky at times, but still amusing and well-written.
