Gary Arnold

Despite its gentility and evasiveness, Julia may have come much closer to the truth about Lillian Hellman on the strength of Jane Fonda's edgy, persuasive performance, which reveals an intelligent woman who couldn't feel more unsuree of herself or less like a conquering heroine.

The problem with S.O.B. is that it reveals another sort of failure on Edwards' part: his fondness for dwelling on this low point in his career. He neglects to update the scenario or liberate it from the self-pity he overindulged in at the time. In fact, it's residual self-pity that undermines S.O.B. as a promising satire of Hollywood mores and hypocrisies. Edwards' tendency to feel sorry for himself keeps intruding on the potential wackiness. [2 July 1981, p.C1]

Nicholson looks severly overmatched against Lange but the basic problem is that the filmmakers miss the mutuality of the obsession envisioned by Cain -- an attraction that enslaves Frank and Cora, inspiring murder and betrayal in the wake of adulterous passion. [20 March 1981, p.C1]

As a rule, the filmmakers manufacture fake climaxes every 10 or 15 minutes, poop out and lapse into forgetfulness, just as if they were structuring the material for television. Norma Rae seems to reflect the confusion of veteran filmmakers so eager to please that they cease to think straight.

As endearing as most of the filmmakers' touches turn out to be, The Natural can be criticized with some justice for skating along the brink of outrageous affectation. In this case, though, the fairy-tale framework of the narrative is established so clearly and remains so cleverly sustained that the movie earns its right to romantic exaggerations. [11 May 1984, p.B1]

The movie's very smoothness may set viewers up for a letdown. It's a low-key exercise in genre suspense and romance that fails to generate a high level of excitement or deliver classic dynamic thrills. [06 Mar 1981, p.C1]

A diverting hit-and-miss satirical anthology in the same spirit as The Groove Tube and Tunnelvision. [13 Oct 1977, p.B15]

Slap Shot comes at you like a boisterous drunk. At first glance it appears harmlessly funny, in an extravagantly foul-mouthed sort of way. However, there's a mean streak beneath the cartoon surface tha makes one feel uneasy about humoring this particular durnk for too long.

For my taste a little bit of Steve Martin goes a long way. Moreover, a rickety vehicle like The Jerk is apt to wear out as aspiring comic star's welcome in one swift stroke.

There isn't much conceptual or stylistic integrity in Tightrope. It's calculated to function at the most expedient and spurious levels of nightmarish artifice. [17 Aug 1984, p.D1]

The tussle between David and The Needle seems to release a Pandora's Box of outrageous scenes. [24 July 1981, p.D8]

All the modest virtues of the original film have been discarded in favor of lurid excess. What was once unpretentious, suggestive, implicit and erotically tragic has become bombastic, literal-minded, explicit and erotically stupefying.

The Karate Kid can't really brushoff the conventional showdown it's incited, so the movie adds the obligatory action payoff to its less expected and more substantial rewards. The filmmakers can't help overbalancing on melodramatic excess from time to time, but their mistakes never obliterate the civilized wisdom of Miyagi's outlook: "Have balance, everything be better." [22 June 1984, p.B1]

Some of the intuitions and sentiments shared by Ashby and the cast result in affecting interludes, but on the whole the material is too diffuse and complacently wistful to accomplish its ultimate goal of getting you there, breaking your heart, scaling the summit of old Mt. Pathos.

Rocky II doesn't merely recall its Oscar-winning predecessor, a modestly produced but astutely calculated inspirational fable about the rehabilitation of a down-and-outer. It slavishly repeats the plot of Rocky, achieving differentiation only in dubious forms: soap opera detours, delaying tactics and an ugly new mood of viciousness surrounding a rematch between the boxers. [15 June 1979, p.B1]

An absurdly upbeat romantic vehicle for John Travolta. The film-makers appear to believe that the moviegoing public craves a reassuring love story, at any cost. This film ends up as s counterfeit endorsement of the so-called simpler so-called values.

Raggedy Man is starved for scenes that might fill out our scanty store of information--for example, a little more about the marriage, the love affair, her identity as a mother. Even the location needs to be filled out, since one forms the misimpression that Gregory is not so much a small town as a ghost town. Next time, the Fisks owe it to themselves to bite off enough material to chew. [03 Jul 1982, p.B3]

Eagle flops around trying to sustain a premise that defies suspenseful elaboration from the outset. No one with his wits about him believes the conspirators will succeed in capturing or shooting Churchill. More to the point, who would want them to? We're asked to suspend disbelief for the sake of a gimmick that not only insults common sense and general knowledge but also betrays old loyalties and convictions. [26 Mar 1977, p.B5]

Without a Trace provides little sustenance. It keeps serving up overprepared tidbits of torment when you'd prefer to get down to a main course. [04 Feb 1983, p.C4]

Its elaborate and meticulously re-created period settings and moods prove far more interesting and diverting than the undernourished characterizations and love stories that flutter and sputter across the foregrounds. [19 Apr 1984, p.D6]

Meatballs is a tartly, unpretentiously funny as its title. A sort of "M*A*S*H" for campers, the deftly timed episodic comedy is fabricated around the pranks, games, rivalries and lusts at a summer camp. As the seniors boys' counselor, an easygoing role model and spontaneous comic genius, Bill Murray of "Saturday Night Live" makes a deceptively sensational debut as a film comedy star. [11 July 1979, p.B1]

It's a beautifully composed and tautly engineered production, a model of trim and attractive genre moviemaking. This movie looks marvelous. Hyams and his cinematographer, Richard Hannah, seem to be experimenting with some form of enhanced lighting that gives the color images extraordinary vividness, a very fine grain combined with a sharp, hard-edged focus that produces a far more expressive three-dimensional illusion than 3-D. The effect is especially breathtaking. [5 Aug 1983, p.C6]

Ironically, the stars didn't get it together either. The Blues Brothers offers the melancholy spectacle of them sinking deeper and deeper into a comic grave.

One gets the uneasy feeling that Jodie Foster is trying to tell us something that has nothing essential to do with Nell's plight. The movie is a coy, condescending vanity production. [25 Dec 1994, p.D6]

Private Benjamin seems coarse, sluggish and interminable as a comedy scenario.

The disappointing thing about Streets of Fire is that it can't deliver on the promise of a tangy, sexy evening of stimulation. The failure is aggravated by the exorbitant scale of the production, which seems much too lavish for an atmosphere of B-movie squalor. [01 June 1984, p.B4]

One of the worst ideas in Murder on the Orient Express was the repeated reenactment of the murder scene. Death on the Nile compounds this vulgarity by visualizing almost every speculation Poirot entertains about his fellow passengers. The redundancy of it all becomes ridiculous. [29 Sep 1978, p.D1]

Vicious and hypocritical as it is, The Gauntlet remains an entertaining sort of disreputable show, considerably more proficient and interesting than junk melodramas in a dogged vein.