Ice Castles

It's simply a good film that children should enjoy and parents feel it worthwhile for them to see. It has a sentimental story, but that's better than the usual dumb good-guys-bad-guys stories; it's corny, but that's better than the cheap smartsyness of most youth films. [02 Feb 1979, p.19]

Director Donald Wrye handles this chestnut with restraint, scoring points about media madness and the fear of success without getting messagy. [05 Feb 1979, p.79]

Miss Johnson may not be an actress, but her lack of emotional resources and her bland ingenuousness conspire to give the manipulative, sentimental, unconvincing conceit of Ice Castles a naive force that occasionally approaches the simple pleasures of Rocky. [29 Jan 1979]

Ice Castles collapses under the weight of sentimental overkill.

You'd have to be blind to miss the moral.

Ice Castles has been shamelessly, and none too slickly, engineered to empty the tear ducts of customers primed to blubber at the sight of a Pavlovian cliche. [03 Feb 1979, p.D7]

It's too bad that Mr. Wrye's bungling renders the story sob-proof, because injured-athlete sagas are usually so hard to resist.