Pauline Kael
“…. It's exactly the kind of bogus picture that will have people saying, "I saw myself in those characters." Of course they'll see themselves in Terms of Endearment. James L. Brooks … guides the actors with both eyes on the audience….
“All this retro-forties virtue piled on the cartoon underpinnings of TV comedy might seem utterly nuts if it weren't for Debra Winger. The movie is a Freudian story of role reversals between mother and daughter, told in a slaphappy style…. I didn't feel much love or any other connection between MacLaine's brittle Aurora and Winger's fluid Emma. They don't have the uncanny similarities--the vocal tricks, the syntax, the fleeting expressions--of real mothers and daughters. I'm not sure what Brooks meant to show us, but what comes across is Aurora as a parody of an anti-life monster and Emma as a natural woman--a life force. The two actresses might be playing in two different movies. Debra Winger--as she did in Urban Cowboy and An Officer and a Gentleman--gives you the feeling that she's completely realized on the screen. There's a capacity for delight that is always near the surface of her characters (and she never loses track of what turns them on). The adolescent Emma (in braces) has a husky, raucous voice and a lowdown snorting laugh; this is not a standard ingénue. Winger heats up her traditional-woman role and makes it modern by her abandon. She floods the character. When Emma's two little sons give her a bad time and she fights with them, she's direct and all-out; she's totally invoved in this power struggle with her kids, and they know it…. Emma thrives on the semi-controlled chaos of family life; she accepts messes--life is messes. All this is in Debra Winger's performance; she's incredibly vivid, and she has fresh details in her scenes--details like spotting a zit on her husband's shoulder while she's lying in bed next to him, talking to her mother on the phone. But Emma has been made too heartbreakingly wonderful. She's an earth mother, of course, with some sort of supernal understanding of Aurora, and when she has her third child she gives birth to her mother--her little girl is a tiny ringer for Aurora. The way that Emma is presented she's a glorified ordinary woman--a slob angel.
“…. [M]ost of the time Brooks' TV-trained intuitions are more than adequate to what he's doing here--extending half-hour gag comedy to feature length by the use of superlative actors who can entertain us even when the material is arch and hopped-up….”
Pauline Kael
The New Yorker, Dec. 12, 1983
State of the Art, pp 93-96
“All this retro-forties virtue piled on the cartoon underpinnings of TV comedy might seem utterly nuts if it weren't for Debra Winger. The movie is a Freudian story of role reversals between mother and daughter, told in a slaphappy style…. I didn't feel much love or any other connection between MacLaine's brittle Aurora and Winger's fluid Emma. They don't have the uncanny similarities--the vocal tricks, the syntax, the fleeting expressions--of real mothers and daughters. I'm not sure what Brooks meant to show us, but what comes across is Aurora as a parody of an anti-life monster and Emma as a natural woman--a life force. The two actresses might be playing in two different movies. Debra Winger--as she did in Urban Cowboy and An Officer and a Gentleman--gives you the feeling that she's completely realized on the screen. There's a capacity for delight that is always near the surface of her characters (and she never loses track of what turns them on). The adolescent Emma (in braces) has a husky, raucous voice and a lowdown snorting laugh; this is not a standard ingénue. Winger heats up her traditional-woman role and makes it modern by her abandon. She floods the character. When Emma's two little sons give her a bad time and she fights with them, she's direct and all-out; she's totally invoved in this power struggle with her kids, and they know it…. Emma thrives on the semi-controlled chaos of family life; she accepts messes--life is messes. All this is in Debra Winger's performance; she's incredibly vivid, and she has fresh details in her scenes--details like spotting a zit on her husband's shoulder while she's lying in bed next to him, talking to her mother on the phone. But Emma has been made too heartbreakingly wonderful. She's an earth mother, of course, with some sort of supernal understanding of Aurora, and when she has her third child she gives birth to her mother--her little girl is a tiny ringer for Aurora. The way that Emma is presented she's a glorified ordinary woman--a slob angel.
“…. [M]ost of the time Brooks' TV-trained intuitions are more than adequate to what he's doing here--extending half-hour gag comedy to feature length by the use of superlative actors who can entertain us even when the material is arch and hopped-up….”
Pauline Kael
The New Yorker, Dec. 12, 1983
State of the Art, pp 93-96
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