PAPER MOON

This film is a delightful journey back to a more innocent time (I guess), the 1930s, where good Christian folk can just hand a 9-year old girl over to a complete stranger, trusting him to deliver her to a distant relative, now that her mother has just died.

The stranger (Moze, played by Ryan O'Neal), is probably her father given that he had had some sort of relationship with the mother, but he is quite keen to just put her on a train.  She (Addie, played by Tatum O'Neal) has other ideas and is pretty darned good at getting her way, so she joins him as he travels the country, plying his "trade", mainly conning recently deceased widows. 

Addie is a chip off the old block, quickly proving herself to be as good a con artist as Moze.  

Then Moze picks up "Miss Trixie", played delightfully as always by Madeline Kahn, much to Addie's displeasure, so Addie has to find a way to get rid of her, which of course she manages. 

Things then take a turn for the worse, when Moze tries to con a bootlegger who happens to be the brother of the local Sheriff.  Moze and Addie manage to escape with their freedom but not their money.

Pleasingly, there is virtually no sentimentality in the story, even at the end when Addie chooses a life with Moze rather than with the respectable relative he tries to leave her with, nor much of a story arc, just a series of enjoyable escapades, nicely shot in black-and-white.

Tatum O'Neal turned nine years old during filming, and acts her father off the screen, winning an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress, the youngest such recipient.

RATING: ✓ If You've Nothing Better To Do