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100To say that Eastwood, who directed, has done a first-rate job of adaptation fails to do him justice. What he's brought off is closer to alchemy.
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88It is easy to analyze the mechanism, but more difficult to explain why this film is so deeply moving.
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88A beautiful film, not only in the way it was photographed, but for the manner through which the characters are revealed to us.
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80Streep and Eastwood's chemistry makes the film.
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80Limited by the vapidity of this material while he trims its excesses with the requisite machete, Mr. Eastwood locates a moving, elegiac love story at the heart of Mr. Waller's self-congratulatory overkill.
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78Bridges is another example of Eastwood's remarkable economy of style as both a director and an actor. It is neither his best work nor his worst, though it is a fascinating exploration.
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75Robert Waller's inexplicably colossal bestseller is transferred to the screen with more art than it deserves, but neither old-fashioned Hollywood craftsmanship nor the massive star power of Eastwood and Streep can compensate for the story's intellectual slightness and emotional implausibility.
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75Clint Eastwood transcends the story's cliches with a classically restrained yet steadily imaginative filmmaking style.
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70What Eastwood and Streep have done is to bring a semblance of emotional reality to the story.
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70Through the actress's effort and her director's generosity, this book about an irresistible man becomes a movie about a remarkable woman. Madison County is Eastwood's gift to women.
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70Given the intelligent restraint of the treatment, this is about as fine an adaptation of this material as one could hope for, although there is still something of a gap between the impressive skill of the filmmaking and the ultimately irredeemable aspects of the source.
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70The reason for the film's success is simple. Screenwriter Richard LaGravenese and director Eastwood skirt most of novelist Robert James Waller's excesses.
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70Screenwriter Richard LaGravenese and director Clint Eastwood have turned out something sombre and restrained -- almost, in fact, good (though it's too long).
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63Richard LaGravenese's flashback script craftily tones down Waller's wind, adds a germane subplot and strengthens the novella's framing device. [02 Jun 1995, Pg.01.D]
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63The film version, competently directed by Clint Eastwood and beautifully acted by Meryl Streep, isn't about to mess with a popular formula - this is a straight-up adaptation as faithful as a fawning spouse.
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60While this adaptation of Waller's treacly bodice-ripper leaves out a lot of the lurid excess, it is not altogether free of pomposity.
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50Even those who despised the original novel should not have trouble stomaching Bridges, while the novel's fans will find the film -- despite some additions -- generally true to what they perceive to be the book's spirit.
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50Director Eastwood favors naturalism and sometimes the effort to reproduce what it is like to meet someone new bogs the picture down irreparably.
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50LaGravenese... has understood that the worst of Bridges is not in its dialogue but in the silent musings that occupy its characters' minds. By keeping those thoughts unspoken, by allowing the camera to show instead of having words tell, much has been accomplished.
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50Eastwood, who directed the picture adequately, is inadequate in this role. He has done a lot of impressive acting in films, but none of it has been sexually romantic, and the age of 64 was not the right time to take up that line of work. [03Jul1995, Pg. 26]
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50Clint Eastwood resurrects the star system, the Hollywood love story, and middle-aged romance, but despite all his craft and sincerity, he and screenwriter Richard LaGravenese can't quite turn Robert James Waller's cardboard best-seller into flesh and bone.
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Positive: 2 out of 2
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Mixed: 0 out of 2
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Negative: 0 out of 2
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PatrickG.10
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JulianB10A romantic and wonderful movie