Stanley Kauffmann

“And now [Mazursky] thinks that Jill Clayburgh is an engrossing screen figure. Clayburgh was passable in Semi-Tough, where she was one of a trio of jokesters, and anyway Burt Reynolds was carrying the personality ball; but this picture is supposed to take place within the recesses of her soul, she is supposed to contain the story. And she is only a slick mannequin, seemingly made of chrome. I have the feeling that if you flicked her with your finger, she would ping.

“But even if the leading role had been played by a woman who can command interest--say, Jane Fonda at her best, even her second-best--the film still would be loaded with clichés, old and new….

“…. [T]his picture carries a buried insult to its ostensible subject. Finally, the picture says that what a woman really needs is a man: that's what will solve her identity problems and all her other problems. The New Woman's troubles are cleared away just like Joan Crawford's--by Mr. Right. Is that all there is to the New Selfhood? Most young women apparently still like living with men… But I doubt that many of them look for a man to take the burden of independence off their shoulders, as the old mythology has it and as, under the mod glitz, Mazursky persists….”

Stanley Kauffmann
New Republic, March 11, 1978
[But it’s okay with, say, The Goodbye Girl?]