Terms of Endearment 1983

Critics score:
88 / 100

Reviews provided by RottenTomatoes

Gene Siskel, Chicago Tribune: Terms of Endearment is about three relationships and students of screenwriting would do well to study the way in which these three stories are told completely and effortlessly in a movie of average length. Read more

Janet Maslin, New York Times: A funny, touching, beautifully acted film that covers more territory than it can easily manage. Read more

Dave Kehr, Chicago Reader: [Writer-director James L. Brooks] has television in his soul: his people are incredibly tiny (most are defined by a single stroke of obsessive behavior), and he chokes out his narrative in ten-minute chunks, separated by aching lacunae. Read more

Kathleen Carroll, New York Daily News: It takes all of perhaps five minutes to fall in love with the leading characters in Terms of Endearment and from that point on, the audience is just putty in the extremely capable hands of writer-director James L. Brooks. Read more

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times: The most remarkable achievement of Terms of Endearment, which is filled with great achievements, is its ability to find the balance between the funny and the sad, between moments of deep truth and other moments of high ridiculousness. Read more

Richard Schickel, TIME Magazine: Its quirky rhythms and veering emotional tones are very much its own, and they owe less to movie tradition than they do to a sense of how the law of unintended consequences pushes us ceaselessly through the years, permitting no pause for perspective. Read more

David Pirie, Time Out: Then The Illness strikes, and the film changes gear completely, pulling out all the stops and almost incidentally delivering one of the best-acted, most moving death-bed scenes in recent memory. Read more

James Harwood, Variety: Brooks' dialog is wonderful throughout and all the characters carry off their assignments beautifully, even down to Danny De Vito and Norman Bennett as MacLaine's other suffering suitors. Read more