Grandview, U.S.A.

Rarely has a major film been so coolly designed to capture the young market. Yet for all its crass calculation, Grandview, U.S.A. has a buoyant vitality, an engaging lack of pretense and occasional bursts of humor and sentiment. The movie's prime asset is a bright, attractive cast. [07 Aug 1984]

It is a shock and a pleasure to see an American film that doesn't wallow in complacency, but instead suggests—however fleetingly—that disappointment is also a part of life. Curtis is particularly impressive in the strength and maturity she brings to a role written as pure fantasy.

Kleiser seems to know something about style and pace after all, and he seems to know something about having fun with a movie. These are minor revelations, and they make Grandview U.S.A. almost unique among its class of film over the past five years: It's worth seeing. [03 Aug 1984, p.C9]

Grandview, U.S.A. is slight, but it has a good enough cast to keep it watchable.

It is a small film, with small, and at times cliched, ideas about rural life, but there is a sweetness about it that is an appealing and refreshing change from the usual roller-coaster films that bombard audiences in the summer.

Grandview, U.S.A., shot in the picturesque small town of Pontiac, Ill., opens with some pleasantly misleading evocations of Breaking Away, then degenerates into one of those blithely cretinous entertainments that leave you despising characters you were presumably meant to like. [08 Aug 1984, p.F9]

Failed comedy-drama with two intermingled plots, one about a high school boy seeking his own way in life, the other about an older woman with career and romance problems. Directed flatly and lifelessly by Randal Kleiser. [16 Aug 1984, p.31]