Here’s a question: why hadn’t I ever seen Paper Moon before? I’ve seen this one around on various streaming services for years. It’s not like, say, The Last Picture Show or something. That one was hard to find on streaming, and it has the same director and black-and-white cinematography. But no, I’d never seen Paper Moon, and one of my sisters, not a fan of old movies generally, watched this one back in the day. You’d think something like this would be right up my alley.
Oh hey, it’s on Max right now.
The movie opens with a funeral as nine year old Addie Loggins (Tatum O’Neal in her first movie) is now an orphan, her mother dead and her father, well, absent. Up pops traveling “Bible salesman” Moses “Moze” Pray, who the neighbors all take to be Addie’s father since he bears a resemblance. I mean, he should. He’s played by Tatum’s dad Ryan O’Neal. However, Moze is more a conman than anything else, and when he arranges for some money to send Addie to an aunt in Sr. Jospeh, Missouri, Addie overhears and thinks the money is rightfully hers. It is the Great Depression after all. Addie’s general stubbornness means the pair are soon traveling together until Moze can “earn” back the money Addie believes is rightfully hers, and it just so happens to turn out that whether or not Moses is Addie’s father, the girl does have a knack for pulling cons on her own. Heck, she might just be better than the man who sometimes poses as her dad.
What follows is more a character study and a series of adventures as the two travel around, conning people when they can. Addie can be very possessive of her position in the car, so when Moses picks up a, shall we say, woman of questionable morals, Miss Trixie Delight (Madeline Kahn, and I would have watched this movie sooner if I knew she was in it), that may be more than Addie can stand. Factor in a Great Depression setting and the long and dusty roads of the Midwest, and there may be some fun times for the viewer to come out of this one despite the setting.
And fun times there are. Addie and Moze make a good team, even if it does appear that Addie is maybe better at the con jobs than Moze is. She also has something of a conscience. Moze’s original scheme involves selling “deluxe” Bibles to recent widows, but Addie will make some changes on the fly depending on how she sizes up the financial state of the target. Likewise, Miss Trixie (a woman very much obsessed with bone structure) is an easy enough person to get rid of and help her long-suffering maid Imogene (P.J. Johnson) once it becomes clear that Moze will spend all of the pair’s money on that high-falutin’ woman. Yeah, there are many serious moments in the movie, but the lighthearted ones work very well.
Really, this one was just a nice ride, a black-and-white trip through Depression-era Kansas, where identical twin brothers might be one deputy and one bootlegger, and a hillbilly farmer might be up to wrestlin’ for a vehicle trade. It’s not that surprising that Moze and Addie bond the way they do. It is surprising it took me this long to find that out.
Grade: A-
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