Hearts of the West (1975)

(On Cable TV, September 2020) I had a harder time than I expected in watching Hearts of the West. Starring Jeff Bridges as a 1930s naïve would-be writer heading west to gather fresh material for his prose, and then to Hollywood to escape a pair of criminals, this film has a lot of elements that I would consider enjoyable. Bridges as a young man, some material about naïve writers, the ever-cute Blythe Danner as the love interest (any resemblance to Gwyneth Paltrow is strictly maternal) and, more interestingly, a look at Hollywood in the everything-goes 1930s before westerns became respectable. But it’s when you dig into the details that it all becomes much messier. For instance, I never got a good handle on its lead character: written as a naïve kid with literary delusions, he’s played by a too-old Bridges as somewhat wiser than what’s on the page: I would have enjoyed the film more had the character been something else—perhaps coming from an eastern city rather than the farm, or something. And while Hearts of the West has been described as having an off-beat tone, the reality feels more undisciplined than anything else: the good moments are undercut with tonal shifts and tangents that don’t do much to reinforce the film itself. Oh, Alan Arkin is good as an old-school producer and Andy Griffith is unusually likable as a has-been star would-be plagiarist. But the low budget seemingly limits the film from creating an immersive look at 1930s filmmaking, and the film doesn’t have a plot as much as an excuse to string along various scenes. In the end, Hearts of the West is intermittently interesting, not quite as likable as it should have been and somewhat vexing in how it squanders promising elements.