The Black Hole

It is good to see the Disney craftsmen doing what they do best on such a grand and risky scale. If one has time for only one space opera this season, this is the one to choose. Read full review

What ensues is sometimes talky but never dull. Director Gary Nelson’s pacing and visual sense are right on target. Read full review

A triumph of style over substance. Read full review

I'll take the Disney any day, in spite of the fact that the characters are cardboard, that the dialogue belongs in a deflated cartoon balloon, that the ending is hopelessly murky and that the acting -- by Schell, Anthony Perkins, Yvette Mimieux and especially Ernest Borgnine, Robert Forster and Joseph Bottoms -- is abysmal. The magic of Peter Ellenshaw's production designs disarms the critical mind: the child in me had a dandy time. [24 Dec 1979, p.79]

The Black Hole is attractively unpretentious and at times quite snappy. Read full review

Despite its obviously derivative elements and lack of flair in certain areas, notably writing and casting, the movie is at worst an entertaining redundancy, a brisk and diverting pastiche of familiar science-fiction adventure hokum. [24 Dec 1979, p.C1]

A pretty craven attempt by Disney to cash-in on Star Wars blockbusting success, this lightweight but well-written sci-fi adventure movie is well pitched at the very young. More discerning fans of the genre would do well to smother their indignation at the levels of general plagiarism floating around the deck of the supership Cygnus. Read full review

Takes us all the way to the rim of space only to bog us down in a talky melodrama whipped up out of mad scientists and haunted houses. Read full review

Gary Nelson's direction is very bad, the writing is weak, and the acting campy at best—but Peter Ellenshaw's production design strikes the right balance of vastness and seductive detail. Read full review

The company's effects team have excelled themselves in the creation of spectacular settings and holograms, but the script reads as though they simply ordered up a melange of Forbidden Planet and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (with a little bit of R2D2 on the side). Next time around they ought to pension off a few designers to pay for a decent screenplay. Read full review

The Black Hole will likely bore anyone not immediately captivated by V.I.N.CENT, the prissy, Cicero-quoting robot with a voice provided by Roddy McDowall and a body that looks like an art-nouveau reinterpretation of a can of beans. Read full review

The Black Hole isn't mediocre or even bad - it's dreadful...[It] looks, sounds and feels like a careless, cynically manufactured B-movie. Uncle Walt must be spinning in his cyrogenic vault. [24 Dec 1979]