Urban cowboy, quite an interesting movie from a number of angles. First off I was a little confused about where the urban part of the cowboy comes from. I mean Travolta goes from hanging out on a farm to living in a trailer park outside of Houston. Is that urban? It does not seem so? I was waiting for Travolta to hop a bus to New York. Well, at one point he did make it into a classy sugar mama's apartment in downtown Houston, but urban did not really come to mind when observing most of the movies settings.
But let's put the whole urban issue aside and focus on the real moral of the story, and that is if there were a time machine, Pasadena Texas in 1980 would make it to the top 5 places in time to go. Charlie Daniels rocking out the local Honky Tonk, domestic bottled beer flowing, cowboy hats all around, chewing tobacco and above all else, really serious parlor games.
Travolta is a little hard headed, self admittedly, and does a lot of stupid things and is only barely sober while he is on the job. He has a threesome as soon as he hits town, then weds a woman that he just met the day before. All seemed to go well until the mechanical bull came into their lives. Travolta, an old soul from a different era believes a woman's role is not to be riding a mechanical bull. His wife has other ideas and so they breakup, she moves in with an ex-con bull riding officianado who lives in a trailer parked in the Honkly Tonk bar parking lot and Travolta starts hanging out with a sugar mama who buys him custom tailored bull riding outfits. In Saturday night fever-esque fashion the big climax has to do with a competition. However, in 80s fashion, the competition is totally random. It's parlor games; mechanical bull riding, a bar punching bag video game, and a dance competition. Travolta gets all geared up for the bull riding competition, wins, gets his wife back (with his sugar mama very liberally offering to be available anytime he "wants to make his wife jealous") then he catches the ex- con trying to rob the competition. Amazing; Travolta 1000, world 0. Just chalk one up for the hard working, domestic beer pounding, dark liquor swilling, tobacco chewing urban cowboy who dared to dream big.