Billy Bob Thornton's white-trash comedy has loads of appeal, beginning with a delightful cast playing the most dysfunctional Southern family outside a Faulkner novel. Thornton and Laura Dern play married couple Claude and Ruby Montgomery, whose true love is stymied by petty jealousies over her old boyfriends and his long-ago romance with Ruby's sister, Rose (Kelly Preston). When Claude's Uncle Hazel (Jim Varney) is arrested, the duo join their extended clan in Little Rock to provide support for him and his defense team (a stormy couple sharply played by Jamie Lee Curtis and Ben Affleck). But cooperation is an alien concept to this family; in no time they're bickering, drinking, and deflating dreams. Typical of Thornton, this is serious yet funny stuff, and the actors--including Andy Griffith, John Prine, Diane Ladd, and Brenda Blethyn--work that fine line between drama and comedy with admirable inspiration. --Tom Keogh
2.
Welcome to America’s Heartland, home of hurricanes, tornadoes, heat waves...and Claude (BILLY BOB THORNTON) and Ruby (LAURA DERN) Montgomery. Never has a couple in these parts been as madly in love, or as often at odds. When news reaches them that Claude’s Uncle Hazel (JIM VARNEY) has been arrested, they head to the family homestead in Little Rock to lend their support. As the extended family reunites, it quickly becomes clear that, with this bunch, anything goes and everyone speaks their mind. It’s a tasty mix of ambrosia salad, armed robbery, sex talk, head-on collisions, and a Macarena monkey -- all the fixin’s for a love story only Billy Bob Thornton could serve up.
It's hard to stand by your man...when your sister's sitting in his lap.
Academy Award winner Billy Bob Thornton (Best Adapted Screenplay, Sling Blade, 1996; Monster's Ball) has created another must-see motion picture as writer, director and star of this darkly humorous comedy treat! Also starring Laura Dern (Jurassic Park), Diane Ladd (28 Days) and Kelly Preston (The Cat in the Hat), it's the entertaining story of a dysfunctionally funny family from Arkansas that rallies to support their uncle (Jim Varney - The Beverly Hillbillies) when he's charged with murder. With Hollywood favorites Andy Griffith, Ben Affleck and Jamie Lee Curtis in an amazing cast of stars, you'll love the amusing give-and-take dished out by this outrageous collection of characters!
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