Bright Lights, Big City

Fox is very good in the central role (he has a long drunken monologue that is the best thing he has ever done in a movie). To his credit, he never seems to be having fun as he journeys through club land. Few do, for long. If you know someone like Jamie, take him to this movie, and don't let him go to the john. Read full review

Director James Bridges (a last-minute replacement for Joyce Chopra) infuses this Manhattan drug-recovery tale with an appropriate rush of humor, pounding dance-club music and breakneck momentum. Read full review

So you figure, what the hell, go with it and enjoy it for what it is, which is C-plus, but A-minus for effort and B-plus for honesty, and since you gave the book a D-minus, you decide you're going to tell your friends to skip the book and see the movie. Then you're left with only one nagging question as you walk out of the theatre into the bright lights of whatever big city you happen to be in: how is Pepsi going to feel about Michael J. Fox doing so much coke? [1 Apr 1988]

It may not capture Mr. McInerney's novel completely or even succeed in standing on its own, but it does go a long way toward bringing the book to life. If Mr. McInerney's readers think it incomplete, they should also find it enjoyably familiar. Read full review

Save for the compelling oddity of seeing Michael J. Fox as a cocaine addict, this drama offers nothing special. [1 Apr 1988, p.A]

An insipid '80s nostalgia piece really, held together by Fox's performance and several neat turns from his support. Read full review

A hollow view of hollowness with a very polished surface. Read full review

Too bad he's caught in a movie that all too accurately captures the tenor of its time with its slick, superficial, coked-up, money-drunk emptiness. Read full review

Fox's performance is surprisingly assured; Sutherland is also convincing as his self-centered, dissipated, and snobbish best friend. Read full review

It's hard to care much about Jamie Conway, an aspiring novelist who is dissipating his substance in New York on cocaine and parties: Fox hasn't the range to play anguish, so the explanatory voice-over is less a survival from the best-selling novel than a necessity. Read full review

In Bright Lights, Big City, director James Bridges ("The Paper Chase," "Urban Cowboy") has made just about the best film imaginable from Jay McInerney's best-selling but fundamentally undramatic novel. Mustering the considerable technical skills at his disposal, Bridges-who took over the project well into shooting when the first director was fired-has turned in a smooth, polished commercial film that at least has the virtue of effectively showcasing Michael J. Fox for his fans. There just isn't much else in the material for Bridges to work with.[1 Apr 1988, p.A]

The movie is like a Porsche outfitted with a lawn mower engine; there's not even enough juice to get the machine out of the driveway. Read full review

While Bridges is a capital stylist, "Bright Lights" needed a great deal more than style. (Real emotion, for one thing. Believability might also have been nice.) And while Fox is puppyish and charming, his character, Jamie, has to go through a real epiphany during the film's weeklong time frame and Mr. Fox is hard-pressed to suggest a two-Excedrin headache. Read full review

This novel-cum-feature film (from Jay McInerney's book) is a distinctly morose and maudlin journey through one man's destructive period of personal loss. Read full review

The fact is, you are not the kind of novel who should be turned into a move. Without McInerney's deft, witty prose to divert and amuse us, where's the beef in "Bright Lights"? [4 Apr 1988, p.72]

Director Bridges coaxes nothing from his smooth-faced star, which is surprising in view of his previous films - Urban Cowboy, The China Syndrome, The Paper Chase - all of which had strong leads (John Travolta, Jane Fonda, Timothy Bottoms). Bright Lights, Big City is certainly an improvement over Bridges' last film, Perfect, but this material requires more intensity than Fox can muster. [5 Apr 1988, p.1D]

The picture isn't terrible, just terribly dull. It feels dated, especially in the scenes that "explain" the hero and show his redemption - the banality comes down on you like drizzle.

Jay McInerney's novel Bright Lights, Big City was hailed as a portrait of the vacuous, coked-out '80s generation. The movie is simply vacuous. The script, also written by Mc-Inerney, strips away the novel's witty and ironic voice. What is left is a vapid yet sentimental cautionary tale about the evils of drugs. Of course, drugs are terrible. But so is Bright Lights, Big City. [1 Apr 1988, p.C1]