Andrew Sarris

“…. Most of the acting struck me as subtle, sophisticted, and modulated. But somewhere along the line I got the feeling that something was missing, that some unintended irony had leaked into the dramatic and thematic machinery, and that there was something wrong with a movie that ended not with a bang, but a whimper.

“The complications begin with Jane Fonda's self-parody as Kimberly Wells, a bright-eyed, red-headed TV newsgirl with a flair for the trivial and a hankering for the significant. Fonda herself describes her role as an acting out of her Brenda Starr fantasy. She may even be reflecting her own transition from the Roger Vadim era of narcissistic dispay to the Tom Hayden era of political activism. The satiric edge of Fonda's performance is dulled somewhat by our awareness of the actress's complicity in her star-image. As in Coming Home, the character she plays must inevitably be awakened from her long sleep of superficiality. She has not really become this character so much as she has commented upon her. I, for one, would not have it any other way. I have been a Fonda fan through Vadim and Hayden, and I would not have her submerge any of her sensuality or humor for the dubious tasks of sub-stellar characterization.

“As the plot would have it, Kimberly Wells was sympathetic to radical causes in the late '60s but decided to return to the establishment fold in the late '70s. She secures a camerman's assignment for an unregenerate '60s style radical… (Michael Douglas)….”

Andrew Sarris
Village Voice, March 19, 1979
[check review to see what how last paragraph fits]