At first glance, the lead character in “The Trip to Bountiful” seems like my worst nightmare: a pushy sort who sits down next to you on a long bus trip, won’t stop talking and sings hymns while you’re trying to sleep.
But with Cicely Tyson in the role, this Lifetime adaptation of Horton Foote’s play is, in fact, a satisfying and heartfelt drama about family, aging and the meaning of home.
Tyson’s elderly Carrie Watts, stuck in a joyless living arrangement in Houston with her workaholic son Ludie (Blair Underwood) — and his neurotic wife, Jessie Mae (Vanessa Williams) — is known for trying to bust out and return to her tiny hometown of Bountiful. She finally succeeds in getting onto a bus bound toward there — pension check squirreled away in her purse — and befriends a young solo traveler named Thelma (Keke Palmer), whose husband is in the service (the film is set in the 1940s).
Foote’s play has seen several high-wattage incarnations already; originally written as a TV movie in 1953, it received a Tony for its Broadway run the following year, then an Oscar for Geraldine Page in a 1985 movie. This version reunites Tyson and Williams, who starred in the Broadway run last year for which Tyson won a Tony.
She’s deeply at home in the part, and it shows; she brings depth and heartache to speeches about her troubled past and her longing to return to her own house. “If I could just set foot there for a minute, even a second,” she tells Clancy Brown’s sheriff character, “I might get some understanding of why my life has grown so empty and meaningless, and why I’ve turned into a hateful, quarrelsome old woman.” (In truth, it’s a bit of a stretch to think of the indomitably sweet Tyson as hateful, but OK.)
Williams, meanwhile, is glamorously irritating as Jessie Mae, swathed in period outfits and glaring imperiously at the mother-in-law with whom she’s been forced to keep quarters. She’s so good at it, in fact, that it becomes a little difficult to tell why Underwood’s low-key Ludie is still happily married to her — but, then, she looks like Vanessa Williams.
Underwood is stepping into the role Cuba Gooding Jr. played onstage last year, and he’s a gentle presence to counteract Williams’ intensity. Palmer, in the smaller role as Tyson’s friend on the bus, winningly opens up to Mrs. Watts as she talks about being embarrassed to be so in love with her absent soldier husband (eliciting a speech from Tyson about a wistful lost love).
First-time director Michael Wilson does a capable job, shooting in the ultra-straightforward style so common to the Lifetime movie: pretty costumes, hazy sunlight and copious face-framing. It’s not the world’s most artful film, but it successfully brings the spirit of the play to the screen, enabling a much wider audience to enjoy the substantial charms of seeing Tyson in such a thoughtful part.