Shoot the Moon

It's no soap opera: it's serious, unsentimental and novelistic in its preference for anecdotal detail over melodramatic plotting and filled with fresh, acute and moving moments. Shoot the Moon can also boast of excellent performances and Parker's most controlled direction to date. Yet these many virtues don't add up to a completely satisfying film. [25 Jan 1982, p.75]

Even Parker's direction, with its unerring sense of pace, cannot disguise an awkwardly episodic narrative which just cannot find a sense of an ending. Read full review

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]

Finney and Keaton each have their heavy dramatic moments, but there is nothing in writer Bo Goldman's script that hasn't been seen and heard in a thousand other films. Read full review

A number of high-powered artists fail to coalesce their talents in Shoot the Moon a grim drama of marital collapse which proves disturbing and irritating by turns. Read full review