Streep's a chic, bespectacled intellectual who travels down to Florida to
interview a sweaty swamp rat (Chris Cooper) about his passion for rare orchids. The longer
she swelters in his pickup, taking in his brilliant riffs on everything from
plant
... moreinsemination to evolution, the more this buttoned-down blonde feels she
has been sleepwalking through life. Why doesn't she care about something as
passionately as this bayou Bogart, grotesquely missing his two front teeth?
Soon, with a little help from some hallucinogens, the lady from New York's gone
all Katharine Hepburn (see "African Queen"), rolling around in
the hay with her noble savage. In a super-witty film that keeps its tongue
firmly in cheek regarding Hollywood script-writing clichés, Streep lets her hair
down in grand style, clearly in on spoofing her own history of dead-serious
dramatic roles. Check out her Suzie-Q, high as a kite on orchid dust, crooning
dial tones on the phone with her besotted lover.