Movieo
Poster for Terms of Endearment

Terms of Endearment

Come to laugh, come to cry, come to care, come to terms.

1983 · 2h 12m · PG Comedy, Drama
Directed by James L. Brooks

Seen it?

Overview

Aurora, a finicky woman, is in search of true love while her daughter faces marital issues. Together, they help each other deal with problems and find reasons to live a joyful life.

Director and cast

Critics on Rotten Tomatoes

Top critics, in their words

All reviews
81%
Tomatometer
Fresh

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.

Kathleen Carroll, New York Daily News
Fresh

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.

Gene Siskel, Chicago Tribune
Fresh

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.

Richard Schickel, TIME Magazine
Fresh

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.

James Harwood, Variety
Rotten

[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.

Dave Kehr, Chicago Reader

Comments

Talk about the film with other members

More films