Snotty Reviewer on how Cousin Kevin Re-Emerged as Fairly Big Movie Star After His Long Decline

http://www.newsday.com/entertainment/movies/how-kevin-costner-got-his-groove-back-1.7043073

This is "Joseph V. Amodio."

Very rarely do I yield to family feelings about the movie star, my 2nd cousin Bill's son Kevin, but the older I get the more I think of what I heard of Guymon, Oklahoma Territory, at the turn of the last century, where the homesteading Costner brothers were my grandfather and Kevin's great grandfather. And I remember the 1980s when I hoped against hope that Andrew Costner, my last Costner uncle, would not be taken to see BULL DURHAM, toward the beginning of which Kevin said FUCK about 211 times. (Just so you know, Andrew Costner left his estate, a few hundred thousand dollars, to the local Baptists.)

Amodio bothers me because of his willingness to write someone off way too early, even though he comes round to saying Kevin Costner has had a comeback.

I could not watch the TV show Kevin won an Emmy for--just too violent from the start--but a few days ago I caught a few minutes of that great Male Weepie FIELD OF DREAMS and thought afterwards of BULL DURHAM and some movies where Kevin was content to play supporting roles. This man has had a career and he never lost it and never had to come back from oblivion, Mr. Amodio.

Costners are workers. My mother was a worker--"farm laborer," says the 1920 Census. I learned a lot from her, and I'll bet Kevin learned a lot about work from her first cousin's son Bill.