Going All the Way

Gramercy Pictures (I) | Release Date: September 19, 1997

CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION

57	METASCORE Mixed or average reviews based on 16 Critic Reviews

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Mixed:

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Critic Reviews

Critic score Publication By date

Barbara Shulgasser

Director Mark Pellington's spin on the transition from adolescence to manhood as viewed through the eyes of novelist and screenwriter Dan Wakefield makes "Going All the Way" something special. Read full review

Renee Graham

Going All the Way is a familiar story told with daring and unsentimental eloquence. At a time when it is rare for exceptional books to become exceptional films, Pellington's debut arrives as a pleasant and welcome exception. [10 Oct 1997, p.C5]

Roger Ebert

Going All the Way is a deeper, cleverer film than it first seems. Read full review

Peter Stack

Even if it's too self-conscious, "Going All the Way," set in 1950s Indianapolis, nevertheless has a mix of the sweet and the forlorn that somehow works. Read full review

Todd McCarthy

Given that the story’s trajectory isn’t very surprising, it’s up to the character details and local color to imbue it with life, and in this the film largely succeeds. Read full review

John Petrakis

The direction by first-timer Mark Pellington is competent, as he pretty much allows Wakefield's script to play out without fanfare. [10 Oct 1997]

Steven Rea

Maybe it's time for a moratorium on Ike-era coming-of-age pictures. Going All the Way, a faithful but belabored adaptation of Dan Wakefield's autobiographical 1970 novel, certainly suggests that it is. [10 Oct 1997, p.04]

John Hartl

The biggest problem with "Going All the Way" is that, despite the genuine eccentricity of Davies' performance and the charismatic smoothness of Affleck's work, the material lacks the freshness it must have had when the book was first published. [10 Oct 1997]

Joe Holleman

Pellington, an award-winning music video director, has a good eye for setting scenes, although the movie falls a few times into a choppy video clip-to-video clip rut. [26 Oct 1997, p.04E]

Staff (Not Credited)

Part satire and part confessional memoir, the film is stronger on period flavour and Sonny's inner demons than on the humanity of some of the other characters. Read full review

John Anderson

Pellington bestows on the film a distracting, if occasionally effective, amount of video technique, and Wakefield’s story is rich and often truthful. Read full review

Stephen Witty

Blown up to big-screen size, you can see that "Going All the Way" isn't "a Midwestern 'Catcher in the Rye' " at all. It's really an old-fashioned gay romance - with everything but the significant glances ruthlessly cut out. [12 Dec 1997, p.L33]

Jeff Baker

Ultimately, it is nothing more than a souped-up, intermittently interesting take on some familiar material. [24 Oct 1997, p.22]

Stephen Holden

In "Going All the Way," a flashy movie adaptation of Dan Wakefield's popular 1970 novel about growing up in the heartland in the repressed 1950s, Mark Pellington, a director from the world of music video, has inflated a realistic memoir into a garish, hyperkinetic social satire. Read full review

Movie NationRoger Moore

See it for the glories of young stars about to take over Hollywood. Because it’s hard to figure out another reason to get all the way through this version of “Going All the Way.” Read full review

Marjorie Baumgarten

Davies and Affleck are affecting and engaging as the callow young men on the verge of independent adulthood. One wishes that we had seen more of their personal drama instead of Going All the Way's myopic male gauntlet of shrews and Jews. Read full review