The Great Santini

Sentimental without being corny, a tearjerker with dignity. The Great Santini is a movie to seek out and to treasure.

Though its emotions are big, the performances are so nicely nuanced that sentiment never overwhelms the story's emotional realism.

Despite the artificial ending, The Great Santini is a powerfully written and acted movie. [03 Oct 1980, p.22]

The Great Santini deserves praise for its willingness to look long, hard, and seriously at a realistic family situation -- a willingness too rarely found at a time when most films are obsessed with futile fantasies. [07 Aug 1980, p.19]

For all its awkwardness and mawkishness, Santini deserves the shot. It has an authentic core of family drama and humor that could stir a large public. [03 Oct 1980, p.C1]

Carlino's direction doesn't help: he was responsible for the atrocious Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea, and The Great Santini suffers from the same triteness, with its Deep South setting and a 'progressive' racial subplot that plunges deep into tear-jerk territory. See it for the acting; wallow in the sentiment.

Overcalculated, thoroughly false humanist mush—one of those “real movies about real people” without a single authentic moment.