“I’m as good as I am.”
That’s how Alice Hyatt (Ellen Burstyn), an aspiring singer waylaid at a greasy-spoon diner in Phoenix, Arizona, assesses her talent toward the end of Martin Scorsese’s Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, but it could be the thesis statement for the entire movie. Alice has dreamed about being a star since was a little girl in Monterey, California, which Scorsese cheekily depicts as a rural idyll like The Wizard of Oz, only here her Over the Rainbow moment is a largely tuneless Alice Faye cover that leaves her fuming in frustration. Now in her mid-30s, recently widowed and penniless, with a pesky 12-year-old boy to manage, Alice has had to revise her expectations considerably. And they’re still a bit too high.
