Avalon

This is a movie that redefines the concept of a family picture. Families should see it together because there will be plenty to talk about regardless of how new your crowd is to this country. [19 Oct 1990, p.C]

Avalon is often a warm and funny film, but it is also a sad one, and the final sequence is heartbreaking. It shows the way in which our modern families, torn loose of their roots, have left old people alone and lonely--warehoused in retirement homes. The story of the movie is the story of how the warmth and closeness of an extended family is replaced by alienation and isolation. Read full review

With Avalon, Levinson reaches into his deepest self, and an artist can't be asked to do much more. Read full review

Very few moviemakers, I think, could have done the thing quite this well. At the end of Avalon, which is more than two hours long and does not move quickly, the extended and fractious immigrant Krichinsky family has bloomed into fabulous life, the characters deep and rich. [19 Oct 1990, p.G5]

When Levinson leaves the older generation behind and concentrates on his immediate family, Avalon becomes suffused with the thrill and anxiety of young, postwar Americans approaching life in a way that’s so new it feels like science fiction. Read full review

What is appealing in Avalon is what is appealing in Levinson's best films, Diner, Tin Men and Rain Man. He creates relationships with texture. After a half-hour, the viewer feels part of the family, yet has an overview allowing a tolerance for the characters they don't always have for themselves. [19 Oct 1990, p.F04]

Sentimentality creeps in now and again, but Levinson's steady grasp of his city's unique atmosphere makes these moments genuinely moving rather than hokey. Read full review

The film often settles for the sentimental and the anecdotal rather than trying for something richer and deeper, but on those levels it works well enough. Audiences will relate to its warmth and sincerity. Essentially, the film is a series of pages from Levinson's family album and it means something to us because it clearly means something to him. [05 Oct 1990, p.45p]

Under the sweet, gooey surface of Avalon there's a more impressive movie yearning to break free - a finely textured movie about how an immigrant man's love of the performing arts produced a grandson who became an important American filmmaker. [22 Oct 1990, p.C1]

Where Avalon works, as with Diner and Tin Men, is where it's improvisory, comic and most artistically humble. Read full review

A generous and touching film that is essentially smaller than its own sweeping ambitions, a crowded and skillfully drawn landscape from which no oversize figures emerge. Affection and memory are the forces that give Avalon its vibrancy, but they are also its limitations. Read full review

If Avalon doesn't succeed in its family-of-man approach, it triumphs on a more theatrical level, as a family-of-actors movie. What Avalon is really about is the magic of performing. [18 Oct 1990, p.F1]

The movie is more striking to watch than to hear, more interesting as a tone poem than as a drama. In the end, it's a half-successful film on a subject that could have been all fascinating. Read full review

Watching Avalon is like leafing through someone else's family album. It undoubtedly means a great deal more to Levinson, because he can make the associations we can't. [19 Oct 1990, p.28]

Levinson wants nothing less than to capture the hope and despair of the American dream through the saga of one family — his family. It’s a grand ambition. But the film, though exquisitely crafted, lacks the political, spiritual and sociological depth to realize it. What Avalon does offer are rich period details, abundant scenes of humor and heartbreak and outstanding performances. Read full review

Avalon is a crowning effort by Levinson. He could stop making movies today and be satisfied with his Baltimore trilogy. [19 Oct 1990, p.6]

The scattered fine comic moments don't make up for the wide streak of fuddy-duddyism in the notion that the family used to be the bulwark of the nation's value system.

What Levinson has created here is a generic memory film, so vague in its particulars that virtually anyone's family experiences can be plugged into it. [19 Oct 1990, p.B]

Despite some fine performances, what should be a crystalline epic is a sloppy and sentimental tale of family life. Sterling performances in a leaden script. [05 Oct 1990]

Allen Daviau's photography is exceptional; Quinn, Mueller-Stahl, and Plowright give commendable performances. Ultimately, though, Levinson's very personal project never acquires a personality of its own. Read full review

It's a shamelessly sentimental interpretation of history, with television ushering in a generation which has lost the art of communication and the ability to care. Against this blinkered vision, even Levinson's confident direction and ability to capture the absurdities and rhythms of everyday speech fail to provide sufficient compensation. Read full review

The movie is the visual equivalent of a stranger picking out highlights from his family album and providing brief descriptions of them. Everything that happens in Avalon, be it happiness or trauma, is infused with the same tone. The result is test-pattern emotion; everything’s on the same level. There’s no discrimination and, hence, no drama. Read full review