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After the wild successes of Saturday Night Fever and Grease, John Travolta nearly derailed his burgeoning career with this critically reviled box office flop. Moment By Moment, written and directed by Lily Tomlin’s manager-turned-wife Jane Wagner, is a May/December romance starring Tomlin as Trish, a freshly divorced Beverly Hills socialite approaching forty years old who can’t shake the attention of Strip, a young drifter nearly half her age (Travolta). After throwing caution to the wind, she enjoys spending time and getting intimate with Strip. But when he professes to love her, she has trouble reconciling how their relationship will be viewed in her social circle.
At the risk of losing whatever shred of credibility I may ever have had as a film critic, I must confess to enjoying this famously awful movie. It’s not hard to see why audiences rejected the film. I think it’s because it turns the ‘male gaze’ upside down, objectifying Travolta in a way that usually is reserved only for female characters in film and television. The critical response may be more justified. The film has no subplots or additional storylines to distract us from the central love story, one in which the characters rarely say what they’re thinking or feeling. This approach may bore many viewers, but I found it somewhat refreshing to be a fly on the wall around two realistic characters — reserved, guarding their feelings, embarrassed by the age difference, which isn’t even brought up until the last half of the movie.
I think Moment to Moment asks us to read between the lines more than mainstream movies usually ask us to do. Travolta is incredibly charming in this movie, so much that I expected he wasn’t really in love with Tomlin — I thought he wanted her status or her wealth, or at the very least the elevated lifestyle she could provide for him. But this is only hinted at in one line of dialogue from a supporting player. I think at some point in the film, he really does fall in love with Tomlin, but this point isn’t crystalized in a single scene or moment. If I didn’t doubt his motives, I might find the film a lot more improbable. In other words, maybe writer/director Wagner was too subtle and should have spoonfed viewers more?
Either that, or I simply like a terrible movie. Either is possible. Admittedly, I have a soft spot for Tomlin and for the late ’70s. There’s something special about that period for me, in the dated wardrobe and hairstyles, the quality of the film itself, and in seeing a great deal of Los Angeles in a time before computers, cell phones, and the internet. Since Tomlin’s character lives on Malibu Beach, there’s also a lot of beach scenes in this movie. To say nothing of how easy on the eyes Travolta is, or how little he’s wearing much of the time. From an escapist angle, Moment to Moment gives me nearly two hours with two great actors playing a forbidden romance in a beautiful location. What can I say? I guess I fell under this infamous movie’s spell.