User reviews

This may not be a memorable classic, but it is a touching romance with an important theme that stresses the importance of literacy in modern society and the devastating career and life consequences for any unfortunate individual lacking this vital skill.

The story revolves around Iris, a widow who becomes acquainted with a fellow employee at her factory job, an illiterate cafeteria worker named Stanley. Iris discovers that Stanley is unable to read, and after he loses his job, she gives him reading lessons at home in her kitchen. Of course, as you might predict, the two, although initially wary of involvement, develop feelings for each other...

Jane Fonda competently plays Iris, a woman with problems of her own, coping with a job lacking prospects, two teenage children (one pregnant), an unemployed sister and her abusive husband. However, Robert DeNiro is of course brilliant in his endearing portrayal of the intelligent and resourceful, but illiterate, Stanley, bringing a dignity to the role that commands respect. They aren't your typical charming young yuppie couple, as generally depicted in on screen romances, but an ordinary working class, middle aged pair with pretty down to earth struggles.

I won't give the ending away, but it's a lovely, heartwarming romance and a personal look into the troubling issue of adult illiteracy, albeit from the perspective of a fictional character.

`Stanley and Iris' is a heart warming film about two people who find each other and help one another overcome their problems in life. Stanley's life is difficult, because he never learned to read or write. Iris is a widower with two teenage children working in a bakery where she meets Stanley. She decides to teach Stanley how to read at her home in her spare time. Over time they become romantically involved. After Stanley learns to read, he goes off to a good job in Chicago, only to return to Iris and ask her to marry him.

It's a really good film without nudity, violence, or profanity, that which is rare in today's films. A good film all round.

Iris King (Jane Fonda) is recently widowed and working at the bakery factory. Money is tight. Her purse is stolen and Stanley Cox (Robert De Niro) helps her. He's an illiterate cook at the factory canteen. She has two kids Kelly (Martha Plimpton) and Richard. Her unemployed sister Sharon (Swoosie Kurtz) and her no-good husband Joe (Jamey Sheridan) are staying with her. Kelly reveals that she's pregnant. Iris and Stanley start hanging out together and she finds out his secret. She lets the cat out of the bag to his boss and he's fired. He's left with menial work and forced to leave his father in an old-age home. When his father dies, he can't even spell the name for the death certificate. He asks her to teach him how to read.

The story has a lot of tough things going on for these poor people. The problem is that it's done with little drama. Both Fonda and De Niro are going low key with their performances. The romance is a slow boil. The movie doesn't hit big points hard or stay with them. The first big move is Joe hitting Sharon. Yet there is little follow up with them. Kelly is pregnant but that's another side trip. The most compelling part of the movie is the illiteracy but I'm not impressed with them transitioning to a romance. The acting is solid but it's all done without much tension or drama.

This is a wonderful movie, with perfect performances by the very best actors. Anyone who doesn't appreciate this little masterpiece has probably spent too much time in front of the TV. The writing is superb, and the direction flawless. From the opening 360 degree pan, which ends by a close-up of the bakery (which is, in fact, the center of the drama), to the outstanding last line of the film (which is, in fact, the theme of the movie), the storytelling is absolutely first-rate. The acting is a study in naturalistic performance style. Jane Fonda is, as always, the best of the best, but Stanley's father steals the show. De Niro, as Stanley, gives an understated and totally endearing portrayal of a resourceful and intelligent "illiterate." This film is the opposite of the "blockbuster" -- finely crafted, intimate, and uncompromising.

I found this to be a so-so romance/drama that has a nice ending and a generally nice feel to it. It's not a Hallmark Hall Of Fame-type family film with sleeping-before-marriage considered "normal" behavior but considering it stars Jane Fonda and Robert De Niro, I would have expected a lot rougher movie, at least language-wise.

The most memorable part of the film is the portrayal of how difficult it must be to learn how to read and write when you are already an adult. That's the big theme of the movie and it involves some touching scenes but, to be honest, the film isn't that memorable.

It's still a fairly mild, nice tale that I would be happy to recommend.

Stanley & Iris takes a stab at a very overlooked topic: adult illiteracy. When Jane Fonda finds out Robert De Niro has survived his entire life hiding his illiteracy, she sets out to help him. She teaches him how to read, and they become friends. He's shy and she's still grieving over her late husband, so romance isn't in the cards—at first. . .

Even though this isn't a film I have any desire to watch over and over again, it really is a good movie. Harriet Frank Jr. and Irving Ravetch write some interesting and realistic situations in the beginning of the film that show how Robert De Niro could get away with not being able to read. When the friendship between the two leads turns into something more, the love scenes are once again written realistically. Jane isn't ready for love, and her character's actions are consistent with her heart's needs. I won't spoil anything, but there's a scene where Jane sobs uncontrollably because she isn't ready to give her heart to someone new, and it's extremely touching. Many times, Hollywood produces a love story aimed at younger people who haven't suffered real heartbreaks yet and can approach love with bright eyes. Stanley & Iris is an adult love story. Anyone who's loved and lived to tell the tale will appreciate this movie.

Just finished watching this movie, and it has left me quite confused. At one level, I enjoyed the movie immensely, for its powerful performances (OK - I have this terrible bias. No matter how much I try, I cannot completely dislike a De Niro movie) and the director's willingness to tread off the beaten path and look at issues that are real and disturbing, but which do not necessarily make the cash registers tingle. At another level, throughout watching the movie, I could not contain my disappointment at the inept treatment that is meted out by the script and the sketchy storyline.

Was the director trying to document an epic human struggle, crafting out a modern day fairy tale, commenting on disturbing social issues or telling a plain love story? And this is where, I think, the movie fails. John Ford, Frank Capra and a host of others have made epic movies about human struggle; Bergman, Woody Allen and a host of art-house directors have delved on various social issues and several film makers from William Wyler to Stephen Spielberg have had their versions of modern day fairy tales. But none of them wanted to be everything in one movie.

The first fifteen minutes of the movie make you think you are about to watch an intense, off-beat social document about burning issues like illiteracy, widowhood, old age, loneliness, teenage motherhood, poverty, mother-daughter relationship etc.

In fact they are all hurled at you one after the other in the first reel itself. It's like the director saying - OK, this is CNN. First the headlines....now, let me see, have I missed anything. Oh of course, teenage motherhood. OK...here you go! OK, guys, now I'm done with the social issues bit, let's get to the love story part.

OK, now - guys - how about some real fairy tale stuff. A rags-to-riches story that's so improbable. Guys, I have only ten minutes of shoot time left - quick, get him rich...hurry! It's here that I feel intellectually cheated.

At one point in the movie, Robert De Niro asks Jane Fonda: why does it have to be all or nothing for you?

That's the same question I'd like to ask the director.

I started by saying it's an intriguing movie. Intriguing because, despite all this, despite the predictable ending and the lack of character-building (the waster brother-in-law shows up once and then disappears forever, for instance) and general lack of depth - you cannot really dislike it. The sheer poignancy and the earnestness of the lead characters (they were battling a sorry script along with poverty, loneliness etc. - full marks to them!) makes you forget your cinematic senses for a while and keep on watching.

If I get a chance, I'll probably watch this movie again, and it's not because of Mr De Niro alone.

Drawing a somewhat (though very different in theme and treatment) parallel - a much more powerful film about middle-aged post-marital flirtations starring De Niro in a similar 'soft' role was 'Falling in love' with Merryl Streep. However, while FIL delivers perfectly, on every count and remains a mini-classic (IMHO), this one comes nowhere close.

It could easily have. Pity.

'Stanley and Iris' show the triumph of the human spirit. For Stanley, it's the struggle to become literate and realize his potential. For Iris, it's to find the courage to love again after becoming a widow. The beauty of the movie is the dance that Robert DeNiro and Jane Fonda do together, starting and stopping, before each has the skills and courage to completely trust each other and move on. In that sense it very nicely gives us a good view of how life often is, thus being credible. Unlike some other reviewers I found the characters each rendered to be consistent for the whole picture. The supporting cast is also carefully chosen and they add a depth of character that the main characters get added meaning from the supporting performances. All in all an excellent movie. The best thing I take from it is Hope.

Working girl Iris (Jane Fonda) keeps bumping into Stanley (DeNiro), a cook. After realizing that he can't read, she accidentally gets him fired. After some ups and downs, Stanley asks if she will help him learn to read. More ups and downs. Of course they fall in love. But there's more to the story. Some other fun people in here - Swoosie Kurtz is her sister; Kathy Kinney (Mimi from Drew Carey) is a coworker. Feodor Chaliapin was Grandfather in Moonstruck. Stephen Root (Newsradio, Milton from Office Space) is Mr. Hentley at the nursing home. It's pretty good. It's a SLOW mover. But Deniro and Fonda must have liked the script. Directed by Martin Ritt; passed away at the end of 1990, so this was his last film. Nomiinated for Hud. Also did Norma Rae in 1979. Story based on a book by Pat Barker. DeNiro made this about the same time as Goodfellas. As of today, Deniro has SEVEN films in production! Fonda took about a fifteen year break, which was approximately the time she was married to Turner. This film is pretty good. Some big names for a simple little story.

As the last film directed by the redoubtable Martin Ritt, this 1990 drama is full of good intentions about adult illiteracy and has two proved star actors, Jane Fonda and Robert DeNiro, in the lead roles. Nonetheless, it rarely hovers above the level of a Lifetime TV-movie, as the story amounts to a series of episodes around the burgeoning relationship between Iris, a recently widowed worker in a pastry factory and Stanley, a quiet, illiterate cook who likes to invent mechanical contraptions in the privacy of his apartment. They meet when he is hired at the company cafeteria, but he loses his job when it becomes clear he cannot read or write. Realizing his illiteracy has prevented him from taking care of his ailing father, Stanley asks Iris to teach him. The rest is pretty inevitable, though there are affecting moments along the way mainly because DeNiro is able to convey the basic decency and veiled humiliation of his character.

What I do miss in DeNiro's performance is the edge of danger that makes him truly transcend his best roles like what he did right after this film as Jimmy Conway in Martin Scorsese's "Goodfellas". Stanley seems to be a distant cousin of DeNiro's similarly passive and inarticulate character in Ulu Grosbard's 1984 "Falling in Love". In what was to be her last film for fifteen years, Jane Fonda seems woefully miscast, looking too intellectually alert and physically aerobicized to portray Iris with conviction. Begging for a Kathy Bates-type to inhabit her, Iris should be downcast about her life and feeling a deepening loneliness about her situation, but Fonda's off-screen resourcefulness makes it difficult to believe this woman would truly feel stuck. It also feels disingenuous of the character to talk about her weight concerns and wanting a couple of eclairs when we are looking at an actress who has made millions on her workout tapes.

Regardless, Ritt is also a master when it comes to showing the trials of everyday people in working class settings, and there is genuine chemistry between the two actors, which helps considerably as the story meanders toward its conclusion. The rest of the cast is used inconsistently as plot devices, in particular, Swoosie Kurtz as Iris's battered sister, who oddly disappears midway through the story, and Martha Plimpton as Iris's sullen, impregnated daughter. I have to conclude the primary problem with the film is the episodic screenplay by Harriet Frank, Jr. and Irving Ravetch, both of whom have teamed with Ritt on a number of superior films like "Hud" and "Norma Rae". The DVD has no extras.

I really enjoyed this little human interest story.

It isn't exciting. It is about every day people and their problems.

De Niro and Fonda are very watchable and have good chemistry.

OMG horrible perm at the end!

Very good drama although it appeared to have a few blank areas leaving the viewers to fill in the action for themselves. I can imagine life being this way for someone who can neither read nor write. This film simply smacked of the real world: the wife who is suddenly the sole supporter, the live-in relatives and their quarrels, the troubled child who gets knocked up and then, typically, drops out of school, a jackass husband who takes the nest egg and buys beer with it. 2 thumbs up.

Excellent acting by the 2 main stars, De Niro and Fonda, make this a movie well worth seeing. A story about an illiterate, and a woman who helps him learn to read. In return, he helps her stop clinging to her past husband and learn to enjoy life again. It was interesting to see a slice of American life that's different from the glamour (huge homes with swimming pools) that is so often the backdrop to Hollywood movies (yawn).

The production quality, cast, premise, authentic New England (Waterbury, CT?) locale and lush John Williams score should have resulted in a 3-4 star collectors item. Unfortunately, all we got was a passable 2 star "decent" flick, mostly memorable for what it tried to do.........bring an art house style film mainstream. The small town locale and story of ordinary people is a genre to itself, and if well done, will satisfy most grownups. Jane Fonda was unable to hide her braininess enough to make her character believable. I wondered why she wasn't doing a post doctorate at Yale instead of working in a dead end factory job in Waterbury. Robert DiNiro's character was just a bit too contrived. An illiterate, nice guy loser who turns out to actually be, with a little help from Jane's character, a 1990 version of Henry Ford or Thomas Edison.

This genre has been more successfully handled by "Nobody's Fool" in the mid 90s and this year's (2003) "About Schmidt." I wish that the main stream studios would try more stuff for post adolescents and reserve a couple of screens at the multi cinema complexes for those efforts.

I'll give it an "A" for effort.

Romantic-minded vehicle for Robert De Niro and Jane Fonda, doesn't really work, isn't very good, and yet the performances are so lovely that one wants to give the picture a pass on personality alone. Fonda does terrific work as a blue-collar widow who has shut-down sexually after the death of her husband; De Niro (alert and handsome) is an illiterate short-order cook (and closet-inventor!) who asks her for help. This adaptation of Pat Barker's novel "Union Street" (a better title) is so low-keyed--and with a sketchy narrative--that even when the tender moments finally do arrive, the audience barely stirs. Director Martin Ritt and screenwriters Harriet Frank Jr. and Irving Ravetch give their stars some good scenes with tough dialogue, but the serious issues here (his illiteracy, her dead-end job) are just plot mechanisms for the ensuing love story. The finale is pure fluff, which cynics will find difficult to swallow, though these two characters deserve a happy ending and the movie wouldn't really be satisfying any other way. **1/2 from ****

Although I didn't like Stanley & Iris tremendously as a film, I did admire the acting. Jane Fonda and Robert De Niro are great in this movie. I haven't always been a fan of Fonda's work but here she is delicate and strong at the same time. De Niro has the ability to make every role he portrays into acting gold. He gives a great performance in this film and there is a great scene where he has to take his father to a home for elderly people because he can't care for him anymore that will break your heart. I wouldn't really recommend this film as a great cinematic entertainment, but I will say you won't see much bette acting anywhere.

I guess if a film has magic, I don't need it to be fluid or seamless. It can skip background information, go too fast in some places, too slow in others, etc. Magic in this film: the scene in the library. There are many minor flaws in Stanley & Iris, yet they don't detract from the overall positive impact of watching people help each other in areas of life that seem the most incomprehensible, the hardest to fix. Both characters are smart. Yet Stanley can't understand enough to function because he can't read; he can't read because he's had too much adventure in his childhood. Iris, although well-educated, hasn't had enough adventure and so can't understand how to move past the U-turn her life took. In both their faults and strengths, the characters compliment each other. It may be a bit of a stretch to accept that an Iris would wind up working year after year in a factory, or that a Stanley never hid his illiteracy enough to work in construction or some other better-paying job. And while these "mysteries" are explained in the course of the story, their unfolding seems somewhat contrived. I assume no one took the time to rethink the script. Even so, it's a good movie—just imagine what De Niro, Fonda and Plimpton would have done on screen if someone had!

I just read the comments of TomReynolds2004 and feel I have to jump in here. I understand he doesn't like the film, but his reasons are not evident. My feeling regarding this film is that it is not afraid to travel the darker roads of loneliness, failure, disappointment and sorrow. Each of these two people, as portrayed, have plenty of reasons to be bitter and angry, yet find tenderness and comfort in each the other. Only great acting could make this work without becoming an emotional quagmire, sentimental and sappy. I really became interested in these people because of their overwhelming humanity given to them by such strong performances. I have every reason to dislike Jane Fonda for her Vietnam era actions, but personal feelings apart, she is fabulous in this role. Robert DeNiro is superb as a man whose intelligence and goodness begins to fail him in a world indifferent to his abilities. This is the first I have seen DeNiro using tenderness rather than toughness to sell a character and I really like it. This film was a big surprise when I first viewed it and I look forward to seeing it again.

Watch the great acting closely, and you might forget you are watching a very incomplete film. It boggles my mind how disappointing this film truly is. You have two wonderful actors, smart dialogue, and a great premise, how could you screw up? The problem with Stanley & Iris is that it feels like it is missing major scenes. The viewer has no sense of time what so ever with this film. It moves at a break-neck pace which isn't called for. If this film would have slowed down a little, explained some scenes a little clearer, you'd have a wonderful little film. The condition of this film is a mess!! What a shame.

I'm a male, not given to women's movies, but this is really a well done special story. I have no personal love for Jane Fonda as a person but she does one Hell of a fine job, while DeNiro is his usual superb self. Everything is so well done: acting, directing, visuals, settings, photography, casting. If you can enjoy a story of real people and real love - this is a winner.

The eighth, final, and least good pairing of screenwriters Irving Ravetch/ Harriet Frank and director Martin Ritt ("Sound And The Fury" haters will disagree) this too relaxed, too meandering film, with too many dead end sub plots, is ultimately done in by the total and complete lack of sexual or any other kind of chemistry between Jane Fonda and Robert DeNiro. Scenes between them not only lack heat and passion, they are pretty much devoid of interest, as well. Scenes that should leave the audience crying...Iris' description, to Stanley, of her late husband...or cheering...when a fully literate Stanley is able to navigate the library...caused this audience member, at least, to react with total indifference. Nor do I buy Fonda as a working gal from Watertown Conn. She's a little bit too much at home at that 5 star hotel Stanley takes her to. Consequently, this film's few engaging or surprisingly good bits, like Stanley's relationship with his dad, and the excellence of the kid actor who plays Iris' son, are soon buried beneath a morass of ordinary. Give it a C. PS...Lovely cinematography and music by Don McAlpine and Johnny Williams that almost make grimy Watertown and the Toronto burbs poetic.