Judith Martin

Such a vehicle is not expected to be completely sound dramatically; and like the couple's truck, it's good enough for a short excursion.

The movie insists that the fate of the world hangs on the actions of these people. If you buy that, you'll buy anything. [11 Dec 1981, p.31]

The intelligence and artistry with which Cutter's Way dresses up the top few cliches of the 1980s is amazing. This is a film with brittle dialogue, complicated acting and visual subtlety in the service of a trite and unworkable story. [20 Nov 1981, p.21]

It is a fine picture, sweet and pathetic, witty and tender. [17 Apr 1981, p.19]

It's a frequent theme of bad children's pictures that knowledge, especially scientific knowledge, is the opposite of unspoiled childhood goodness,and here it is again, only weakly contradicted by the one pleasant actor in the film, Jack Soo, as an idealistic truant officer. It's as if kiddies' mindless escape films, unlike adults', needed to carry their own internal justification. [31 March 1978, p.15]

The thrust of the film is to escalate the Superman idea to the point where the charm is no longer visible. A snide and knowing viewpoint has left a cloud of smudge over the original clean satire. [19 Jun 1981, p.19]

There is no attempt to explain why an actress would go to pieces when she discovers a point of identity with her role; nor why an actress who is constantly loony, drunk, abusive or all three would not be understudied, let alone replaced. It should be noted that the play-within-the-movie is even worse than the movie-about-the-play. [14 Apr 1978, p.18]

It's simply a good film that children should enjoy and parents feel it worthwhile for them to see. It has a sentimental story, but that's better than the usual dumb good-guys-bad-guys stories; it's corny, but that's better than the cheap smartsyness of most youth films. [02 Feb 1979, p.19]

It's a like a film made by people who don't really care, for an audience of people who don't really care. It stars Tim Conway and Don Knotts, who are not exercising their legitimate comic talents beyond one expression each: Conway crosses his eyes, and Knotts makes his eyeballs disappear upwards. [13 July 1979, p.25]

This conflict between love and ambition is finely depicted as far as it goes, and the period setting, in a time when birth control problems made the choice of marriage a commitment to unlimited family life, could have reinforced the poignancy of the choice. But because the character has been thinly written, her decision seems selfishly arbitrary. [14 March 1980, p.17]

This is by no means the first film, nor the first film about the movie industry, in which the epitome of emotion is represented by a character talking on the telephone while oral sex is being performed on him. [3 July 1981, p.19]

Filmed in velvety browns, with shafts of sunlight filtered through old windows, The Haunting of Julia is a definite cut above the current horror movie cliche, but yet not up to the classic psychological ghost-story level it aims at.

The intentional comedy in the film always seems on the verge of working, but then is quickly bludgeoned to death.

To present a simple progression from crime to trial to death, when a moral dilemma was promised, is a dramatic crime. [01 May 1981, p.19]

In a glaring case of the pot insulting the kettle, the Michael Crichton film Looker keeps sneering at television for being mindless and lascivious trash. Actually, "Looker" is so mindless it doesn't even justify its own silly premise, and so lascivious that it keeps announcing that its own collection of indistinguishably bland starlets represents physical perfection. [30 October 1981, p.17]

This particular kind of social satire, a quick and deft combination of fashions in clothes, words and romance, can be done better on the screen than in books, where it requires the enumeration of too many details, or on stage, where the details can't be seen. Rich and Famous, directed by George Cukor, does it brilliantly. [9 Oct 1981, p.21]

The complications of international diplomacy have been ridiculously simplified -- a bare room with an obviously pasteboard view symbolizes Soviet duplicity. Scenes that ought to be suspenseful are put into flashbacks, so that you know in advance that the dangers were survived. [18 Apr 1980, p.19]

The non-judgmental state, in which the wrecking of a family is treated like a natural disaster for which there is no human responsibity or possiblity of control, is also true to the spirit of the society the film depicts. But it makes the film, like the marriage itself, seem irritatingly thoughtless. [19 Feb 1982, p.4]

The occasional use of real people on old film is jarring. But cumulatively, the effect is the strength of American pop to convey American mythology. [6 March 1981, p.15]