Honeysuckle Rose

• Also known as On the Road Again
• Directed by Jerry Schatzberg
• July 18, 1980
• Loosely based on the 1936 Swedish film Intermezzo by Gösta Stevens and Gustaf Molander

A country singer on the road is caught in a romantic triangle with his wife and the daughter of his longtime musical sidekick. Buck is a creep!

Honeysuckle Rose takes its good time getting started. It’s certainly a slow-moving movie and at two hours that’s a little concerning. Being careful and taking it slow in building the situation is fine, but this never gets below the surface shying away from getting too serious in a movie where the plot is about a married musician taking up with the daughter of a friend with that friend’s daughter having taught the philanderer’s son music since both were young.

The music is fantastic. Then again you would expect no less in a movie with Willie Nelson in his prime. He’s no slouch now, but in his musical prime, which was longer than many others, the man could pretty much do no wrong. This features On the Road Again several times. While I like the song, it gets a bit over used.

The focus is the music over what could have been a meaty story. The story exists in what Hollywood thinks ‘country’ is and not genuine country. It is something you kind of wish would be real but rarely existed then or even now outside of a church social from 30 or more years ago. It crafts a fantasy to perhaps highlight the life that should be embraced.

Willie Nelson plays country crooner Buck Bonham at the center of the story. He has very few lines in comparison to other main actors or even some of the supporting cast. Not a great actor but never a bad actor. He could get the job done with just enough polish that you were fine with whatever he was doing. Plus he always had a cool factor whenever he came onto the screen. His general charisma is his biggest plus but his age makes it a bit difficult to believe he has a young son or that a barely out of her teens girl is willing to cross her father or become a homewrecker for.

Those last things get brushed over or just ignored. Buck never gets painted in too negative of a light nor do his actions bring much personal or professional harm. Garland (Slim Pickens), the father of Buck’s temp-to-hire guitarist Lily (Amy Irving), has a brief scuffle with the guy trying to schtupp his daughter while married but then it is all cool. So many things are wrong once Buck starts making moves on Lily but this never gets into any of that.

With Slim Pickens and Dyan Cannon as Buck’s wife Viv, Honeysuckle Rose (a reference to Buck’s farm) is certainly a slice of its time with the cast. Slim Pickens was a great character actor and Dyan Cannon was never terrible. She only gets one really good moment (and does great) which is when she confronts Buck ON STAGE AT A CONCERT! It is a bit of a vicarious thrill.

Viv wants Buck to stay home while Buck wants to stay on the road only popping in at home to see Viv and his son Joey (Jamie Floyd) when he needs a rest or as implied a booty call. The professional presentation of Buck waffles between a popular yet smalltime performer and a major draw able to casually perform with Emmylou Harris. I am assuming the footage of larger venues is from an actual Nelson concert. This movie would have worked much better if he were consistently a mid-tier act. It would make his roving a MAYBE excusable since he would be somebody so close to greatness but never quite getting it.

Viv seems to not only be the brains behind Buck’s fame as well as the stability of the farm but is a long-suffering wife who takes him back after he was attempting to get with a barely legal friend’s daughter with little to no promise of everything being stable. It defies logic. You don’t even have a heart to heart. She just gets mildly convinced that he’s worth having and they sing a song and it says everything is gonna be okay.

The main problem gets dropped in and quickly resolved with a song performed by the three in the triangle. The acting is fine but there’s just not much to this movie because of the number of musical intervals. There are plenty of establishing shots and a push for very downhome moments. The dynamics between Buck, Viv, Lily, and Garland should have been what drove the movie. Instead the affair pops up in the last third or so with nothing too much done to make a case for either or really that fractures any relationship.

This movie is nearly 2 hours and probably could’ve been reduced to an hour and a half easily with fewer characters getting anything besides playing music and a few comments to flesh out the reality. The talent they have is underutilized. Lane Smith was a good actor and just kind of wasted in his extended scenes which didn’t do much for the story.

So much of this movie is dealt with simplistically. It’s all surface level with no diving deeper into so many things that should’ve been dived into deeper. Buck is a truly terrible person, but he never gets framed as that. Just think about everything he did and all the betrayals of trust that Buck committed. He even humiliated Garland’s intended replacement so he could keep his side piece around. All rather trite. Entertaining but trite.

Honeysuckle Rose is a movie that is more focused on musical intervals than it is on telling an actual story. It could have been interesting but there’s just not much to talk about. Listen for the music and skip for the rest.