The credits indicate this is based on the John Steinbeck books Cannery
Row and Sweet Thursday. It is 90 percent Sweet Thursday with a little
Cannery Row, like the frog roundup thrown in for good luck. The first book
let us know that Suzy wasn't the first to live in the boiler. A couple
had preceded her. We don't see this in the movie. The movie
has a couple twists to the relationship of Doc (Nick Nolte) and Suzy,
(Debra Winger) like Doc having been a baseball player. Doc's place gets
broken up like the first book, and he ticks off Suzy like in the second
book. I like the spunkiness of Suzy's character. However I think she
was too hookerized. Part of the fun of the book is she just didn't fit
with that life style. There was no way for the movie to portray the
different voices talking to the Doc. They really make the book
interesting, the drive and the futility of the drive.
Nolte does an adequate job as the Doc. He does seem more like and
ex-baseball player than the Doc from the book. I miss the Doc's rich
eccentric friend, who sponsors him in the end to get a high powered
microscope. The movie ends with Mac and the boys earning money and they
mistakenly get him a telescope.
This movie ends happy with Suzy learning to drive so she can drive Doc to La Joya.
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