Always

It's the film in which an entertainer at last becomes an artist, dealing with manifestly personal, painful emotions and casting them in a form that gives them philosophical perspective and universal affect. It's Spielberg's finest achievement, a film that will look better and better with the passage of time. [22 Dec. 1989]

You expect virtuosic technique from Spielberg, and it's there, in spades. What you don't expect is heartfelt romanticism. But that's there, too... Always is a terrific-looking throwback to those large-scale '40s cinematic stews of romantic longing. [22 Dec. 1989, p.43]

Though there are scenes in Always (both intimate and spectacular) I love, the film does seem a bit asking-for-it-weightless following an Indiana Jones sequel. Yet if, as I suspect, many reviewers elect to carve up Always, the film will pick up its devotees - now or down the road. [22 Dec. 1989, p.1D]

Always is a relatively small scale, engagingly casual, somewhat silly, but always entertaining fantasy. Read full review

Always has the benefit of likable characters and actors. Dreyfuss, Hunter and Goodman are good. But several scenes seem needlessly slow, and the film as a whole would be better if it had been pared down from 120 to 90 minutes. At times it seems the title and the running time are one and the same. [22 Dec. 1989, p.R13]

In some ways this is as metaphysical as something like Close Encounters, it’s just lacking the tonal control of Spielberg at his best. Read full review

This is Spielberg's weakest film since "1941." Read full review

The whole thing means to come down to big, round tears and mass sniffles, but though Spielberg invokes as many golden-era cliches as he can recall, he never gets the romance really working. It's tough being compared to Spielberg, and perhaps unfair if you happen to be Spielberg, but this is easily his least substantial film to date. Some tears, yes. No sparks. [22 Dec. 1989, p.G5]

The result is a movie with a lot of hysterically funny lines (including a nod to St. Louis) shooting through the banal, timeworn plot, relieved occasionally by a well-wrought sketch. Director Steven Spielberg tries to stir this mixture, but it's just too flour-y. [22 Dec. 1989, p3F]

Always is a nice try for Spielberg, and the cast gives it a game try... The movie's generally dull effect makes it clear, however, that Spielberg still has some maturing to do before he's ready to scan the depths of human - not to mention cosmic - psychology.

Gentle and moving as it means to be, Always is overloaded. There is barely a scene here that wouldn't have worked better with less fanfare. Read full review

Spielberg doesn't differentiate between the good ideas in the script and the bad ones: everything is given an emphatic, production-number treatment... His ultraslick, seductive technique can be a pleasure to watch in itself, but it can't disguise the fact that "Always" is a decidedly uneternal fantasy. [1 Jan. 1990, p.60]

Always is meant to be a fantasy. But it is far too sappy to ignite the imagination. [22 Dec. 1989, p.6]

To report that Always will make you cry is not esthetically saying much; slicing up onions has the same effect. Leslie Halliwell's one-word summation of the forties version applies to Spielberg's update for the nineties: "icky." [26 Dec. 1989]

Always is an unfulfilled promise, a plummeting dove. Read full review

Always is such a lamentable production _ hardly a moment rings true _ that you almost feel like saying ''pardon me'' when you wonder why it apparently didn't occur to Spielberg or anyone else involved that no chemistry was taking place. Not only are the stars rather uninteresting people, they don't seem to like each other in any way that you can feel. [22 Dec. 1989, p.E1]