Melvin and Howard (1980)

Director:  Jonathan Demme

Writer:  Bo Goldman

Composer: 

Starring:  Jason Robards, Paul Le Mat, Elizabeth Cheshire, Mary Steenburgen, Michael J. Pollard, Charles Napier, Martine Beswick, John Glover, Dabney Coleman

More info:  IMDb

Tagline:  Poor Melvin. All he wanted was to be Milkman of the Month. Instead, he lost his job, his truck, and his wife. Then Howard Hughes left him $156,000,000.

Plot:  The story of hard-luck Melvin E. Dummar, who claimed to have received a will naming him an heir to the fortune of Howard Hughes.

My rating: 7.5/10

Will I watch it again?  Maybe.

The performances in this thing are solid.  Everybody nails it.  Paul Le Mat's Melvin is just a down to Earth guy, Mary Steenburgen brings it (she and Bo Goldman won Oscars for Best Actress In a Supporting Role and Best Original Screenplay respectively), and Jason Robards has that mystique and curiosity needed for Howard Hughes.  And then there's Charles Napier who owns his brief moment as the mystery man who drops off the will.  It's a warm-hearted story about real people with real problems that get upended when it looks like Melvin's good deed for an old man might make him a millionaire 156 times over.  Uh, oh...Nudity Alert!

Thank you, Mary Steenburgen.  Where was I?  Oh, yeah.  Melvin's struggles with the will (and he kind of just wants to be left alone) reach an apex when he testifies his story to a prosecutor and judge (among many others) that don't believe a word of what he claims.  The judge is coldly and harshly played by the always great, Dabney Coleman.  This is probably when the movie gets the most serious and dark.  A few minutes later, it's time for the flick to wrap up and move onto the credits, but before we do, we get one more brief scene not seen from Melvin and Howard's time together.  It's the perfect bookend to an often charming film.