Nothing in Common (1986) (2024)

Popular reviews

• Review by 📀 Cammmalot 📀 ★★★ 7

  Tom Hanks-A-Thon: Film #8

  ”Are you involved with anybody”
  “No…well, does self-involved count?”

  Here it is. The first glimpse of what Tom Hanks would eventually become. A fun charismatic man in a dramatic role.

  Granted, it hasn’t fully crystalized, but it’s the first time we see him breaking away from pure comedy and trying for something a bit more mature. The film has some decent moments, however it tries to do way too much and doesn’t quite land.

  Hanks portrays a self involved ad exec who’s life is thrown into turmoil when his estranged parents decide to divorce and they both look to him for support. It was Jackie Gleason’s last role and despite his multiple illnesses he still manages…

• Review by Ricky Wade ★★½ 1

  Midway through this rote dramedy with a likeable cast there is a close-up of Jackie Gleason’s wrinkly, bruised, scabbed-over, rotting foot that is so unsettling it will haunt my dreams forever.

• Review by Benjamin Green ★★★

  You know the dog didn't die, it committed suicide

  Tom Hanks Filmography
  Feature Film Number: 7
  Year: 1986
  Age: 30 (at time of release)
  Source: Blu Ray

  This is Tom Hanks 7th feature film but unfortunately Jacke Gleasons last in a comedy-drama that takes on too much and struggles to come to grips with its core plot.

  Attempting to tackle a sons emotionally turbulent time in dealing with the separation of his parents is one thing but Nothing in Common also attempts to cram in romance and the challenges of a prmotion/executive job. It doesnt work. The lack of clear balance and direction causes pacing issues and distances the viewers connection with its characters. In the first 45 minutes we…

• Review by Quiller ★★★

  Like other films Garry Marshall directed, this one has a lot of promise but doesn’t stick the landing. It’s mainly remembered as the movie where Tom Hanks, still early in his stardom, first demonstrated he could handle drama as well as comedy. He plays an up-and-coming advertising executive who has to confront his unresolved feelings about his parents (Jackie Gleason and Eva Marie Saint) when they separate and his father loses his job andhas a medical emergency after ignoring his diabetes for too long. Hanks ends up juggling both of his parents’ emotional needs and a demanding new client — not to mention jealousy when ex-turned-best-friend Bess Armstrong starts dating someone new.

  I don’t typically associate Marshall with subtlety, but…

• Review by Scarecrow88 ★★★

  Fathers and sons, ammirite? I might have mentioned this in my previous LB review, but my very first VHS tape, I was ten, and this was the first recorded film for me. Before it, my parents had a few tapes but I had some birthday money or something and got the VHS tape with this film. It was only about three years since I had lost my dad so maybe I was working through some hardship so this film hit me even as a kid. Hanks' rising Star was still so obvious. But maybe the shocker of last year remains very much this revisit. The film is a lot about the adverts job and a big airline contract with the…

• Review by Wesley Stenzel ★½

  Feels like the result of someone (Garry Marshall?) going “why don’t the boys have their own Terms of Endearment?” and then neglecting to do anything that that movie does well. This is one of Tom Hanks’ worst starring performances because he still hadn’t figured out his particular lane of leading man — he later settled into being a reliably nice guy with a darkness or sadness that simmers and occasionally bursts in his best films, but here he’s a total smartass jerk with a heart of gold, essentially the exact opposite of what he’s come to be good at. He’s like a Ryan Reynolds character, and it’s disconcerting to witness.

• Review by Tom ★★★★

  My kind of movie. Lots of heart and many laughs. Some may not like the pacing but I found that the pacing benefitted the story in the long run and made the film feel more realistic. The Basner family was so wonderfully realized by the actors. Eva Marie Saint especially wowed me with her fantastic performance

• Review by Patrick Delmore ★★

  Gary Marshall tries to keep several balls in the air in ‘Nothing in Common’ if he’d just taken time to focus on one of the many plot elements, this might have been a really good movie. Tom Hanks, newly promoted, drumstick twirling,advertising executive, is the wheel around which all these plots spin. His mother, Eva Marie Saint, has left his father, Jackie Gleason. His boss, Hector Elizondo, needs to be assured he looks good in a toupee. Hanks is introduced fooling around with a stewardess, Cindy Harrell, during a flight, he sleeps with a new client, Barry Corbin’s daughter, Sela Ward, both of whom he has to impress on different levels. He’s also still in love with an old flame…

• Review by Varghese ★★★½

  I was never a fan of Splash.But here Tom Hanks shows us his dramedy skills in full flow. The supporting cast of Gleason and Saint are strong.Familiar and yet touching.

  P.S - Lovely soundtrack also!

• Review by Hannah K ★★★½

  This movie is absolutely mislabeled. Everything I found about it as I was pulling stuff together for this review treated it as a comedy, when it's clearly a thoughtful family drama more than anything else. I wasn't entirely sold on this movie while I actually watched it, and perhaps it would be more accurate to say I admired it than that I liked it. The final scenes in particular are worthy of mention -- when the story takes a turn for the darker toward the end, each scene is really beautifully done, and each seems poignant and moving. I also appreciate that the narrative structure is different than a lazier version of this same story. The story, in fact, seems…

• Review by BrambleScramble ★★★½

  HANKSMAS 6 of 54

  I actually thought this forgotten Hanks + Marshall glorified TV pilot was a pretty great look into the yuppie genealogy despite Jackie Gleason macabrely in the process of dying in real life and also in this movie, compounded by Marshall’s penchant to be over-sentimental when it’s least needed. Hanks is still in his phase of feeling like a replacement for Chevy Chase, but man is he funny in this one. We’re heading into the Prime Hanks era now.
  ——
  - Richard Kind here in a non-speaking role for a split second, uncredited. As I can tell, his first movie.
  - Features Happy Gilmore’s grandma’s house.
  - Dan Castalanetta has a bit role and does the Tracy Ullman Homer Simpson voice a whole 3 years earlier!

  DOES TOM EAT: A single piece of popcorn, but it counts
  DOES TOM PISS: No. No piss.

• Review by daria ★★★

  i never sang (original christopher cross and carly simon songs) for my father