The Prince of Tides

The Prince of Tides marks Ms. Streisand's triumphantly good job of locating that story's salient elements and making them come alive on the screen. Read full review

Generous in its emotions as well as its visuals, it makes its healing energies real because it takes the trouble to make its characters' pain believable. It's a big, bold, slightly old-fashioned film carried by its heartfelt conviction, by Barbra Streisand's painstaking direction and self-effacing acting, and by Nick Nolte. [25 Dec 1991, p.47]

They ought to forgo the formalities and simply give Nick Nolte his Oscar right now for what is one of the great performances on screen, in this season or any other, in Prince of Tides, a sensitive, emotionally explosive jewel directed by Barbra Streisand, who also co-stars. The powerful, haunting drama opens today. [25 Dec 1991, p.E1]

An assured and very serious love story that allows neither humor nor romance to get in the way of its deeper and darker subject. Read full review

Nolte gives a superlative performance, rich and full, packed with emotion and yet not overly hysterical. [25 Dec 1991, p.3F]

Bringing her usual strengths of character to her role as Nolte’s psychiatrist/lover, Barbra Streisand marks every frame with the intensity and care of a filmmaker committed to heartfelt, unashamed emotional involvement with her characters. Read full review

Barbra Streisand's lovely adaptation of Pat Conroy's bestseller echoes the novel's seductive cadences, the cries of summer gulls, the slapping of the Atlantic on the South Carolina shores. An emotionally satisfying film, The Prince of Tides loses some of the stuff readers hold dear, but the pull of the sea, its saltiness too, lingers. As a story of rebirth through self-exploration, it seems ideally suited to this season of illumination. Read full review

Prince of Tides brims with earnest emotion, but it's packed as tight as a can of sardines. There's no room for the actors to breathe, to relax, to reflect on the events around them...Despite numerous flaws, this is an unusual and special movie, a throwback to an era when big pictures were made about little people in the throes of everyday crisis. [25 Dec 1991, p.1D]

Director Barbra Streisand does justice to the popular book until the two-thirds mark of the film, whereupon the script abruptly changes from a psychic history to a gauzy romance. A Prince of a movie, until the end. [27 Dec 1991]

The results may seem overripe and dated in spots, but she coaxes a fine performance out of Nolte, and the other actors (herself included) acquit themselves honorably. Read full review

Streisand's been in front of cameras so long she's thinks of them as mirrors. Luckily she has a good eye and it, more often than not, has the ability to look straight to the soul. Read full review

Nolte has his moments and is the reason to see the film, but he won't quite be the fait accompli shoo-in once Tides' Oscar panhandling begins. [24 Dec 1991, p.1D]

Graced with fine performances and commendably biting off more than it can ever hope to chew, The Prince Of Tides is a rare slice of romantic moviemaking for all those grown-ups feeling ignored since Kramer Vs. Kramer last rattled their value systems. Best to take along your mother, a large box of hankies, and a hefty dose of salt. Read full review

To her credit, Streisand has turned in a handsome, seamless piece of very traditional Hollywood direction. This is mainstream filmmaking at its main-streamest, smooth and glossy and reminiscent, in fact, of the kind of work Sydney Pollack did with Streisand in "The Way We Were" and without her in "Out of Africa." Read full review

The difference between The Prince of Tides and a movie like Ordinary People is that Streisand isn’t content with exploring human pain. She had to make it glamorous, too. Read full review

As star, director and co-producer, Streisand shifts the book's focus from the Wingo past to the Tom-Susan love affair. This could have worked had Streisand directed herself better--if, indeed, she had directed herself at all. Instead of a performance, we get smirks, poses, campy shots that linger on her outrageously long manicured fingernails, and radiant, cloying smiles. Streisand's inadequacies, though, are more than compensated for by Nolte's compelling Tom. He brings conviction and depth to the role, treading a fine line between self-pity and self-respect and exposing his frailties with a rare sensitivity. Read full review

Part Oscar bid, part vanity project and all pretty silly. Only Nick Nolte, as Tom Wingo, the psychologically blocked Southern high school teacher who is Conroy's protagonist, transcends the circumstances to deliver a performance of skill and commanding sympathy. Read full review

Ihave it on good authority that Pat Conroy's The Prince of Tides is a wonderful book. People rave about it. But Barbra Streisand's lumbering, tearjerker adaptation gives little hint of that. This movie is long and full of pain, and it's driven by the most syrupy musical score I can recall. [25 Dec 1991, p.1]

If The Prince of Tides has a saving grace, it's the acting. In what is probably the most subdued role of her life, Streisand is remarkably graceful and charming: This woman who has so often been accused of self-infatuation hands much of the movie over to her co-stars. Read full review

They do make 'em like it any more. Read full review

Even the stalwart Nolte drowns in the laughable idiocy of the Wingo-Lowenstein love affair, which lifts Tides to the fiasco class. Read full review