Straight Talk

In this slight but pleasant romantic comedy, Straigth Talk, Dolly Parton plays Shirlee, a big-hearted Arkansas dance teacher who gets fired from her job and dissed by her live-in lover. Fed up, she throws her low-cut dresses and high heels into her Pinto and heads for Chicago, where she’s mistaken for a talk-radio psychologist. She’s a hit, but a reporter (James Woods) is determined to expose her as a fake-until he falls for her. Dolly is immensely likable, despite the fact that her aphoristic advice sounds like a twangy version of Marianne Williamson’s yuppie love-thyself mantra. And Woods, an unlikely romantic-comedy leading man, nearly conveys warmth. More like a TV movie than a feature film, this fractured fairy tale (directed by Murphy Brown‘s Barnet Kellman) seems right at home on the small screen. B-