‘Even Cowgirls Get the Blues’ By Desson Howe Washington Post Staff Writer May 20, 1994

Director: Gus Van Sant Cast: Uma Thurman; John Hurt; Rain Phoenix; Noriyuki language and adult sexual situations Compare prices for this movie Find local video stores More movie shopping Save money with NextCard Visa

"Even Cowgirls Get the Blues"-the-movie, starring Uma Thurman, is a moribund, monotonous affair. Reducing the novel to its most basic plot line, writer-director Van Sant clips every flight of Robbins's fancy -- the only thing that holds the book together in the first place. Bereft of atmosphere, or even coherence, the movie becomes an episodic parade of goofballs, eccentrics and lesbians whose lives and purposes are barely outlined. Sissy and company deserve better than this.

How could Van Sant -- maker of "Mala Noche," "Drugstore Cowboy" and "My Own Private Idaho" -- produce such an unmitigated disaster? How did he go from image-poet to all thumbs? He seems also to have instructed his numerous performers -- including Keanu Reeves, John Hurt, Lorraine Bracco, Rain Phoenix and Noriyuki "Pat" Morita -- to exhibit their dullest instincts. Even Hurt, Britain's ham-in-residence, who plays the ultra-flamboyant Countess, is oddly subdued. As for Thurman, who brings grace to almost everything, her Sissy seems weighted down by those prosthetic, zucchini-sized digits.

They should have called this "Even the Living Dead Get the Blues."

Set between the 1950s and 1970s, Sissy's story is about a down-home gal from Richmond who transforms her physical appendages into roadside attractions: Those thumbs literally stop traffic. With slick swoops and curvaceous gyrations, she hitchhikes her way around the country, flagging down anything that moves -- from buses to shooting stars.

Her life takes a plot-thickening turn when her old friend, the Countess, sets her up with asthmatic Native American Julian Glitche (Reeves). Dissatisfied with Julian and his bizarre coterie of friends (including wacko Crispin Glover), Sissy returns to the Countess. The drag queen promptly dispatches Sissy, an erstwhile model, to film a commercial at the Rubber Rose, the Countess's health spa-cum-cattle ranch in Oregon. There, Sissy encounters Bonanza Jellybean, a burly rancherette who likes to roll with the Dales of the world rather than the Roys.

From here on, the episodes bump into each other like blind, drugged cattle. Sissy and Bonanza fall in love. Sissy encounters a prophetic mountain fella (Morita) called the Chink (who's Japanese -- don't ask). The cowgirls, a gay society in the making, take over the ranch. When the Rubber Rose gang plies a flock of whooping cranes with grain and peyote, causing the birds to interrupt their migratory habits, the FBI gets involved and -- hey, the book was written in 1976.

As this never-ending drama progresses, Sissy becomes increasingly incidental to the story. Eventually she's a passive little observer, watching wide-eyed as absurdities unfold around her. It is at this point that the audience will finally relate to her situation.

"Even Cowgirls Get the Blues" is rated R for language and adult sexual situations.

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