Most audiences will be thoroughly sated from the wing-walking, midair transferring, outside-looping and tragic crack-ups to overlook its faults.

| Apr 24, 2025

It is much lacking in narrative and character, and makes little of the period.

| Mar 20, 2025

Trouble is that Producer-Director Hill provided a story... and a strangely dichotomous one it is.

| Mar 6, 2025

Hill has tried to jam too much into one picture.

| Mar 3, 2025

The Great Waldo Pepper lifts off on what appears to be a flight of pure, light-hearted adventure and almost immediately runs into rough weather.

| Mar 3, 2025

Some critics have written off The Great Waldo Pepper as another exercise in nostalgia; but it has a poetic texture altogether richer than that.

| Mar 3, 2025

There is an inconsistency to the character of Redford that never lets him come close enough to the audience to be real. He is shallow and he is there, but he is difficult to empathize with.

| Mar 3, 2025

The themes never quite come off, but they add a fake solemnity that gives a vaguely spurious air to the whole movie.

| Mar 3, 2025

"The Great Waldo Pepper" is a wonderful bromide for the plastic chicken, paternalistic pilots and chemical toilets that are the sum of today's friendly skies.

| Mar 3, 2025

The performances... are impeccable and there are good aerial acrobatics.

| Mar 3, 2025

There are some breathtaking aerial sequences showing all the tricks of the trade, the loop-de-loops, the death spins and the wing walks.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Mar 3, 2025

The picture is a tepid drama.

| Mar 3, 2025

For run-of-the-mill moviegoers... it is more likely to come off as a silly but harmless enough exercise.

| Mar 3, 2025

The essential problem is that story and script play like patchwork convenience with little life and narrative thrust, existing mostly as an excuse to put the planes in the air.

| Mar 3, 2025

The ending is muffed. But no matter -- up to the moment where pretentiousness sets in, it's a joy-ride.

| Mar 3, 2025

As simple entertainment, with as much emphasis on pawky comedy as drama, it suffices well enough. It's just that one expects more from this source and seldom gets it.

| Mar 3, 2025

Hill has fashioned both a beautiful and warmly humorous film.

| Mar 3, 2025

"Waldo Pepper" is a marvelously entertaining movie.

| Mar 3, 2025

Hill must take a good deal of the blame for a film that sounds like it has everything going for it but that leaves the audience fidgeting and waiting for the end.

| Mar 3, 2025

As for the picture's attempt for nostalgia and for a portrait of a romantic hero, "Waldo Pepper" is pretty much of a bust.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Mar 3, 2025