Avalon

This is a movie that redefines the concept of a family picture. Families should see it together because there will be plenty to talk about regardless of how new your crowd is to this country. [19 Oct 1990, p.C]

What is appealing in Avalon is what is appealing in Levinson's best films, Diner, Tin Men and Rain Man. He creates relationships with texture. After a half-hour, the viewer feels part of the family, yet has an overview allowing a tolerance for the characters they don't always have for themselves. [19 Oct 1990, p.F04]

Under the sweet, gooey surface of Avalon there's a more impressive movie yearning to break free - a finely textured movie about how an immigrant man's love of the performing arts produced a grandson who became an important American filmmaker. [22 Oct 1990, p.C1]

Where Avalon works, as with Diner and Tin Men, is where it's improvisory, comic and most artistically humble.

The scattered fine comic moments don't make up for the wide streak of fuddy-duddyism in the notion that the family used to be the bulwark of the nation's value system.

Despite some fine performances, what should be a crystalline epic is a sloppy and sentimental tale of family life. Sterling performances in a leaden script. [05 Oct 1990]

The movie is the visual equivalent of a stranger picking out highlights from his family album and providing brief descriptions of them. Everything that happens in Avalon, be it happiness or trauma, is infused with the same tone. The result is test-pattern emotion; everything’s on the same level. There’s no discrimination and, hence, no drama.