Stanley & Iris

Iris King (Jane Fonda) is recently widowed and working at the bakery factory. Money is tight. Her purse is stolen and Stanley Cox (Robert De Niro) helps her. He's an illiterate cook at the factory canteen. She has two kids Kelly (Martha Plimpton) and Richard. Her unemployed sister Sharon (Swoosie Kurtz) and her no-good husband Joe (Jamey Sheridan) are staying with her. Kelly reveals that she's pregnant. Iris and Stanley start hanging out together and she finds out his secret. She lets the cat out of the bag to his boss and he's fired. He's left with menial work and forced to leave his father in an old-age home. When his father dies, he can't even spell the name for the death certificate. He asks her to teach him how to read. The story has a lot of tough things going on for these poor people. The problem is that it's done with little drama. Both Fonda and De Niro are going low key with their performances. The romance is a slow boil. The movie doesn't hit big points hard or stay with them. The first big move is Joe hitting Sharon. Yet there is little follow up with them. Kelly is pregnant but that's another side trip. The most compelling part of the movie is the illiteracy but I'm not impressed with them transitioning to a romance. The acting is solid but it's all done without much tension or drama.

source: Stanley & Iris

This film has a special place in my heart, as when I caught it the first time, I was teaching adult literacy. It rang very true to me and even an outstanding student I had at the time. There are scenes which make you gulp with sudden emotion, and those which even put a smile on your face through sheer identification with the characters and their situation. Excellent performances by Jane Fonda and Robert DeNiro that rank with their best work, a great turn by a young Martha Plimpton, an inspiring story line, and a haunting musical score makes for a most enjoyable and rewarding experience.

`Stanley and Iris' is a heart warming film about two people who find each other and help one another overcome their problems in life. Stanley's life is difficult, because he never learned to read or write. Iris is a widower with two teenage children working in a bakery where she meets Stanley. She decides to teach Stanley how to read at her home in her spare time. Over time they become romantically involved. After Stanley learns to read, he goes off to a good job in Chicago, only to return to Iris and ask her to marry him. It's a really good film without nudity, violence, or profanity, that which is rare in today's films. A good film all round.

I found this to be a so-so romance/drama that has a nice ending and a generally nice feel to it. It's not a Hallmark Hall Of Fame-type family film with sleeping-before-marriage considered "normal" behavior but considering it stars Jane Fonda and Robert De Niro, I would have expected a lot rougher movie, at least language-wise. The most memorable part of the film is the portrayal of how difficult it must be to learn how to read and write when you are already an adult. That's the big theme of the movie and it involves some touching scenes but, to be honest, the film isn't that memorable. It's still a fairly mild, nice tale that I would be happy to recommend.

This is a wonderful movie, with perfect performances by the very best actors. Anyone who doesn't appreciate this little masterpiece has probably spent too much time in front of the TV. The writing is superb, and the direction flawless. From the opening 360 degree pan, which ends by a close-up of the bakery (which is, in fact, the center of the drama), to the outstanding last line of the film (which is, in fact, the theme of the movie), the storytelling is absolutely first-rate. The acting is a study in naturalistic performance style. Jane Fonda is, as always, the best of the best, but Stanley's father steals the show. De Niro, as Stanley, gives an understated and totally endearing portrayal of a resourceful and intelligent "illiterate." This film is the opposite of the "blockbuster" -- finely crafted, intimate, and uncompromising.

I don't want to talk about the two movie icons in this film, I just want to talk about the poor logic flaws in this film. Stanley was not an immigrant from the none English speaking foreign country, he's an American, born in America. He grew up in America, educated in the American education system, even he's an orphan, he would have been educated from the elementary school to junior high, to high school. That's a basic American underage education provided freely by the American government. Even if by any chance he might be a person with serious learning disability, he at least could have learned how to read and write the basic English. So there's no way this Stanley character created by this stupid film could not read or write A to Z alphabets, his own first and last names, read the street signs. He's not a retard person born with serious brain damage. Even a deaf child would have the ability to learn how to read and write. Yet this Stanley guy, born in America, could not read or write, even his own full name. Hey, this is not the primitive 200 years ago America, boy never got the chance going to school, so he could write and sign his name with a big X like Indians. The Stanley guy was later fired due to his illiteracy. The excuse to fire him was he might do something wrong in his food processing job. BUT, a VERY BIG "but", how come he could be hired by the bakery factory in the first place? Did he have to sign his name with the HR Dept. when he was hired? Although both leading actors performed nicely in this somewhat awkward and too predictable romantic film, there were so many question marks and flaws in this film that could never be justified or explained. It's like building a structure without foundation. Even building a wood cabin, you still need to build a foundation first. Without foundation, nothing can stand. It bothered me extremely when I tried to watch this film, because its poorly founded logic blocked me to watch it blindly. I just couldn't sweep the illogic storyline, the basic premises of a scenario under the carpet and shifted my focus to the later bloomed romance. A love story built on a ridiculous foundation simply couldn't stand long enough with a basic reasoning logic.

Excellent acting by the 2 main stars, De Niro and Fonda, make this a movie well worth seeing. A story about an illiterate, and a woman who helps him learn to read. In return, he helps her stop clinging to her past husband and learn to enjoy life again. It was interesting to see a slice of American life that's different from the glamour (huge homes with swimming pools) that is so often the backdrop to Hollywood movies (yawn).

Stanley Cox (Robert DeNiro) is a great guy. He is kind-hearted, loyal, a hard worker, totally honest and intelligent. He is also kindly to his aging father whom he must put into a nursing home. There is only one problem. He can't read or write. That apparently happened because he slept through school and nobody bothered to wake him up, assuming he was just another dummy with no future ahead of him. That is until Iris King (Jane Fonda) comes along. This hard-working factory worker, a widow with a troubled family, takes an interest in his plight, and takes it upon herself to teach him how to read and write, falling in love in the process while getting over the memory of her late husband. There is really little plot and not a sensible reason as to why Stanley has never learned to read and write. When Iris accidentally costs Stanley his job by revealing to his boss the truth about him, you really don't believe that she wouldn't stand up and fight for him. Stanley isn't an innocent like Dustin Hoffman's character in "Rain Man" or dim-witted like Lon Chaney's character in "Of Mice and Men"; He is a normal "Joe" whom I just couldn't believe would never leave his neighborhood or be able to purchase anything if he can't read or write, let alone count money or know what denomination he is giving a cashier. There is little information on how he has survived up until then, and that is where the film looses credibility. Where it becomes entertaining is that the two characters are totally likable. It is very interesting to see these two Oscar Winning stars together in spite of the fact that Fonda publicly denounced "The Deer Hunter", the Oscar Winning Vietnam film from 1978 that starred DeNiro the very same year that Fonda won her Oscar for the anti-war "Coming Home". There is also little impact in the story with Fonda's family, which includes her troubled sister (Swoosie Kurtz, most of whose role must have been left on the cutting room floor) and her young daughter (Martha Plimpton). In a nice small role, "The Drew Carey Show's" Kathy Kinney plays one of Fonda's co-workers. I really wanted to like this more than just your average "Hallmark" type movie. There is absolutely nothing offensive in it, and only two scenes that are even mildly disturbing-one the opening where DeNiro comes to Fonda's rescue after her purse is snatched on the bus, and the other the slap that Kurtz gets from her struggling husband. How many movies of the past 30 years can claim that they simply are showing life without all the ugliness surrounding it? Maybe that's the film's problem. It is all too nice and wrapped up neatly rather than brought to a more dramatic head.

Watch the great acting closely, and you might forget you are watching a very incomplete film. It boggles my mind how disappointing this film truly is. You have two wonderful actors, smart dialogue, and a great premise, how could you screw up? The problem with Stanley & Iris is that it feels like it is missing major scenes. The viewer has no sense of time what so ever with this film. It moves at a break-neck pace which isn't called for. If this film would have slowed down a little, explained some scenes a little clearer, you'd have a wonderful little film. The condition of this film is a mess!! What a shame.