Terms of Endearment - Movie Reviews

A rather atypical Best Picture winner, this look at the complicated relationship between mother and daughter is notable for bucking conventions rather than serving them.

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5 | Feb 7, 2024

A genuine heart-warmer and true heartbreaker.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4 | Nov 19, 2023

Terms of Endearment is more than just the epitome of a tearjerker. It is an often-hilarious look at the love that prevails within a dysfunctional family.

Full Review | Jun 27, 2023

Terms of Endearment is the rare commercial picture that sets audiences to laughing hysterically and crying unashamedly, sometimes within consecutive seconds, and then shoos them out of the theater in contended emotional exhaustion.

Full Review | Dec 6, 2022

The picture isn't boring; it's just fraudulent.

Full Review | Aug 22, 2022

Thanks mainly to fine acting in all the major roles and most of the minor ones, "Terms" is pretty well irresistible entertainment. It turns giggles into lumps in the throat and crinkles the eyes with laughter while it is misting them with tears.

Full Review | Jul 21, 2022

Though the sudden shift into Love Story territory may have the clang of soap opera for some, it's an effective twist.

Full Review | Jul 21, 2022

Director James L. Brooks peppered the script with wry dialogue and some touching moments. But in jumping between Aurora's farce and Emma's earnest melodrama, Brooks left his other characters with neither heart nor intelligence.

Full Review | Jul 21, 2022

This is a smart, funny, emotionally devastating picture that refuses to pander to an audience by giving it merely the expected.

Full Review | Jul 21, 2022

[Terms of Endearment] is in a lofty class by itself, addressing its issues as it creates them, shooting from the hip with deadly accuracy. That it is also one of the most profoundly funny movies of the year is a joy in itself.

Full Review | Jul 21, 2022

Terms of Endearment is a movie of heart. And not a pink one cut from satin; a heart of muscle and blood shuddering away in its encasement of bone and sinew. A real heart.

Full Review | Jul 21, 2022

Terms of Endearment is that uncommon kind of American movie, the kind that doesn't just manipulate our feelings, but releases them. It rates a resounding yes because it doesn't insult our emotional intelligence.

Full Review | Jul 21, 2022

Terms of Endearment uses illness as a manipulative theatrical subterfuge that is completely misdirected, poorly handled, and ultimately destructive to enjoyment of the first portion of the film.

Full Review | Jul 21, 2022

[James L. Brooks] is so intent on giving his film a leisurely, lived-in feeling that he even courts our boredom. But without the actual leisure of an entire TV season to develop his characters, he doesn't leave square one.

Full Review | Jul 21, 2022

In a true Hollywood miracle, first time director-producer James Brooks and his stars Shirley MacLaine and Debra Winger transplant these characters, with all their vivid eccentricities intact, from the page to the screen's best comedy-drama in years.

Full Review | Jul 21, 2022

There's something enlightening -- and disturbing -- about a motion picture that is so well written, so well-acted and so wise and knowing in its scope that you become swept up in the lives of its characters.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4 | Jul 21, 2022

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.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4 | Jul 21, 2022

Terms of Endearment is one of the few American movies of the last few years to tell a genuinely epic story of a woman.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4 | Jul 21, 2022

The two [tones] just do not belong to each other, and while polished acting and good use of locations are not entirely wasted, they deserve better than this.

Full Review | Jul 21, 2022

Terms of Endearment manages to be sentimental and sophisticated at the same time. Its characters and situations are wholly contemporary. Yet the film maintains a solid, old-fashioned conviction that the human heart is at least close to where it should be.

Full Review | Original Score: 8/10 | Jul 21, 2022