Consenting Adults

You don't leave the theater feeling swindled and you don't leave wishing you'd seen a home run. In this case, a triple is just fine.

Director Alan J. Pakula generates a degree of suspense, even though the story's implausibilities and overall stupidity of Kline's and Mastrantonio's characters are stupefying. Everyone in this movie is a prig, including a frail E.K. Marshall as Richard's defense attorney who doesn't believe his client's innocence and Forest Whitaker as a private eye who lets Richard do the investigating. [16 Oct 1992, p.5]

Consenting Adults is well-made, preposterous junk -- the kind of modestly effective thriller that delivers a modicum of thrills but insults its audience, over and over, to achieve that effect. [16 Oct 1992, p.C1]

Consenting Adults initially seems a little brainier than its brethren but soon gives way to the same cavernous lapses in logic and formula ending, though the cast and clear appeal of the genre could insure a strong opening and modest long-term box office life.

The second half of the film -- that is, everything after the dubious wife-swapping -- is as mindless and sloppy as the first half is sharp.

ALAN J. Pakula's name may seldom be associated with movies of dazzling brilliance, but you can generally rely on him for entertaining, first-rate work, like All the President's Men, Sophie's Choice and Presumed Innocent. He's let us down badly with Consenting Adults. [20 Oct 1992]

WE ALL know we have to suspend disbelief when we go to the movies, but never has an audience been asked to suspend as much as it has been by director Alan J. Pakula in Consenting Adults, a dumb, unconvincing tale that features some of the poorest performances in history. [20 Oct 1992, p.9D]