The Right Stuff

It is long. Very, very long...And it feels its length, feels every bit the 190 minutes of it. This is a problem for a movie. A movie can be any length at all if its audience remains unaware of its artifice, remains suspended in time. But in The Right Stuff, we are always aware that there's a movie going on, rather than lives on a screen; by the end, there is the feeling of having been dragged through recent history, feet first. The Right Stuff is exciting from time to time; it has its jolts and its snaps and its nostalgic tweaks. But there is more to a roller coaster than a bumpy ride, and The Right Stuff does not thrill. [16 Oct 1983, p.L1]