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