Melvin and Howard (1980)

Directed by Jonathan Demme. Starring Paul Le Mat, Mary Steenburgen, Pamela Reed, Jason Robards, Jack Kehoe, Cheryl Smith, Rick Lenz, Michael J. Pollard. [R]

A rhapsodic, imaginative slice-of-life comedy inspired by one of those wild true stories that begs to be dramatized but needs the proper approach, and director Demme and scribe Bo Goldman found it. Genial working-class nobody Melvin Dummar (Le Mat) is driving through the Nevada desert when he picks up an irascible stranger who crashed his motorcycle…an irascible stranger who turns out to be rich, reclusive loon Howard Hughes (Robards). Howard doesn’t reveal this fact to Melvin, though, nor does Howard ever speak to Melvin again before croaking and leaving a hefty sum to his “savior” in a contested Last Will and Testament. Goldman writes gracefully about cornball quirks and dreamer blues, a vision of Americana that’s at once effervescent and brittle, and the film really comes to life when the second half of the double billing is as hard to find as the real feller, creating a ballad of sorrow and joy following Melvin’s janky exploits. It’s such a treasure, in fact, that there’s no depressing comedown once the will/courtroom plot kicks into gear toward the end (the weakest stretch, but hardly worthless, with a nice kiss-off to materialism before such an ideal became pure fantasy a few years later). Goldman won an Academy Award, as did Steenburgen as Melvin’s first wife, a flaky tap-dancer-slash-go-go-dancer. Dabney Coleman, John Glover, Charles Napier, and Gloria Grahame all have small roles.

83/100