Mostly a filmed "slice of life" play, the four central characters are somewhat interesting.

TxMike

Why I watched this movie is perhaps more interesting than the movie itself. I wanted my own DVD copy of a superb movie, "The Legend of 1900" with Tim Roth. That DVD sells for around $15. But I could buy a two-pack of Tim Roth movies, "The Legend of 1900" and... "Bodies, Rest&Motion", both DVDs in separate packages, for less than $10 total! So, what's a guy to do? Seems like crazy marketing, but I'm better off for it.

"Bodies, Rest&Motion", is named for Newton's Law of Physics, which states, a body at rest or in motion will tend to stay in that state unless acted on by some outside force. This is supposed to describe the four main characters, and their situations in life, what do you do with yourself. Phoebe Cates as Carol is clearly the best here. The reasonable, organized one, but who still has some contact with her former boyfriend, the useless and amoral Nick, played by Tim Roth. Bridget Fonda plays Beth, Nick's current live-in girlfriend. He gets fired from his TV salesman job ("I was going to quit anyway") and announces to Beth that in two days they would be moving from Arizona to Butte, Montana, because it seemed like a good change, even though neither had been there. In comes Eric Stoltz who plays Sid, the painter hired to repaint the house before the new tenants move in.

The movie is about how they interact with "life" and with each other. Each encounters "outside forces" which alter their states of rest or motion, not so much physically, but psychologically. It is interesting as a character study, but we get no backstory when the movie begins, and we get no resolution when the movie ends. It's only interest is seeing the characters interact. Fortunately, all the characters are interesting.

SPOILERS FOLLOW, you may want to quit reading. As Beth is preparing to move with Nick, he calls mutual pal Carol, asked her to tell Beth he has left town, heading north. So she gets rid of everything as she also has a quick overnight affair with Sid. We see Nick try to look up his parents in his old home town half way, but finds strangers living there. For some reason he heads back to Arizona and finds Beth gone, with nothing but her VW and some belongings in suitcases. Nick finds out details of the past day, tells Sid, who professed to already love Beth, he was crazy to let her go. Thinking she would be traveling to her parents in Florida, Sid takes off east on I-10, then after dark begins to stop at cheap motels, looking for her car. The movie ends, after not finding her at the first place, and we presume he will continue east and continue looking, and we don't know if he will ever find her. An outside force, however, has changed his motion.

score /10

TxMike 3 November 2004

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw0956914/