Books, Arts & Manners: Two Youths

Will American movies about children ever grow up? Rainer Maria Rilke once accused the young novelist Friedrich Huch of turning children in a book into miniature adults. In Tex, which Charlie Haas and Tim Hunter adapted from a novel by S. E. Hinton for Walt Disney’s Buena Vista Company, we supposedly get honest treatment for youth and a step ahead for Buena Vista. But a stultifying blandness prevails. The youths, though most of them look too old for their supposed age, are genuine enough. Like the adults, however, they have miniature brains.

Fifteen-year-old Tex McCormick (Matt Dillon, looking like a dim 23) lives with his brother, Mason, 17 (Jim Metzler, looking like a somewhat brighter 25). Their mother died long ago; their father, a rodeo clown, stays away longer and longer, and sends less and less money back home to Bixby, Oklahoma. The film begins with Tex happily riding and jumping his horse; soon Mason sells it and his own to pay some overdue bills. Tex is inconsolable and vows vengeance. Meanwhile atmosphere has been established: Tex at school, razzed by the girls in his class, notably by pretty Jamie Collins, whose brother, Johnny, is Tex’s best friend, and whose rich father. Cole, is the meanest man in Bixby; Tex at home, with his brother having to look after him and spur him on; Tex in his mind, undisciplined and resentful of the impending basketball scholarship that may take Mason to distant Indiana.

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John Simon

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Will American movies about children ever grow up? Rainer Maria Rilke once accused the young novelist Friedrich Huch of turning children in a book into miniature adults. In Tex, which Charlie Haas and Tim Hunter adapted from a novel by S. E. Hinton for Walt Disney’s Buena Vista Company, we supposedly get honest treatment for youth and a step ahead for Buena Vista. But a stultifying blandness prevails. The youths, though most of them look too old for their supposed age, are genuine enough. Like the adults, however, they have miniature brains.

Fifteen-year-old Tex McCormick (Matt Dillon, looking like a dim 23) lives with his brother, Mason, 17 (Jim Metzler, looking like a somewhat brighter 25). Their mother died long ago; their father, a rodeo clown, stays away longer and longer, and sends less and less money back home to Bixby, Oklahoma. The film begins with Tex happily riding and jumping his horse; soon Mason sells it and his own to pay some overdue bills. Tex is inconsolable and vows vengeance. Meanwhile atmosphere has been established: Tex at school, razzed by the girls in his class, notably by pretty Jamie Collins, whose brother, Johnny, is Tex’s best friend, and whose rich father. Cole, is the meanest man in Bixby; Tex at home, with his brother having to look after him and spur him on; Tex in his mind, undisciplined and resentful of the impending basketball scholarship that may take Mason to distant Indiana.