54
Metascore
12 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 90The New York TimesJanet MaslinThe New York TimesJanet MaslinNeil Simon is hardly Norman Rockwell, but his Brighton Beach Memoirs has a warmly nostalgic quality, something that has traveled very nicely to the screen...A film of surprisingly gentle charms. Mr. Simon's humor is much in evidence, but it is not the film's strongest selling point. Even more effective are the sense of a place and a way of life long vanished and the care and affection with which they have been summoned up.
- 70Washington PostPaul AttanasioWashington PostPaul AttanasioBrighton Beach Memoirs (written by Neil Simon from his hit play) is a regularly funny and at times affecting movie that captures, if not always successfully, the kind of back-and-forth of any ordinary family. And what makes it most powerful, perhaps, is the knowledge that the family is, at least in part, drawn from Simon's own.
- 60Time OutTime OutMildly diverting comedy in overexposed terrain.
- 60TV Guide MagazineTV Guide MagazineDirector Saks, who won a Tony for his stage direction, works in his typically fish-out-of-water fashion here, trying to put some air into a stagebound work, but much of the spontaneity of the theater version seems to have been supplanted by the mechanics of moviemaking. The acting by a very talented cast is generally quite good, even if Danner doesn't convince as an old-fashioned Jewish mother type. More of a nostalgic piece than a story, the film shows an attention to the specifics of the culture on display which has genuine if modest appeal.
- 60Los Angeles TimesMichael WilmingtonLos Angeles TimesMichael WilmingtonBrighton Beach Memoirs may be one of Simon’s best plays, but the film’s heart seems to be beating in a plastic wrapper. There’s a kind of glace over everything, a sugary show-biz coat that dulls your taste buds. Everything is bigger, brighter and broader than it should be--though remnants of that simpler, more honest story often peek through.
- 50Chicago Sun-TimesRoger EbertChicago Sun-TimesRoger EbertThe movie feels so plotted, so constructed, so written, that I found myself thinking maybe they shouldn't have filmed the final draft of the screenplay. Maybe there was an earlier draft that was a little disorganized and unpolished, but still had the jumble of life in it.
- 50Chicago TribuneDave KehrChicago TribuneDave KehrBrighton Beah, curiously, still doesn`t work on film, perhaps because movies have no use for stagecraft, no matter how brilliant it may be. Once there`s no practical reason to keep the action restricted to a single set --movies, of course, can go anywhere--Simon`s strategic skills come to seem superfluous, if not an actual liability.
- 50Miami HeraldBill CosfordMiami HeraldBill CosfordThis version was directed by Gene Saks, who is Simon's stage director, and who presumably knows what he wants. Getting it is another story -- Saks seems to have been so concerned with cooling down the play, taking the "theater" out of it, that he let the warmth go, too. [25 Dec 1986, p.B1]
- 40The New YorkerPauline KaelThe New YorkerPauline KaelSimon instinctively makes things easy and palatable, and there's a penalty: it's the retrograde, pepless snooziness of the picture. You come out feeling half dead.