Hoffman, Streep and Henry persuade you that they are "real" people in a "real" situation, and that is a rare phenomenon in contemporary movies.

| Aug 5, 2022

In concept, in casting, but especially in execution, it is easily the year's most successful motion picture and probably one of the decade's. In assessing credit one hardly knows where to begin.

| Aug 5, 2022

Kramer vs. Kramer never loses its low-key, realistic touch. You will sit at the end of the film wondering why we don't see more pictures like this.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Aug 5, 2022

Perfection comes in all sizes, skyscrapers to microcircuits. At its size and weight, Kramer vs. Kramer is as nearly perfect a film as can be.

| Aug 5, 2022

Far from being the contest between equals that its title implies, Kramer vs. Kramer pays only marginal lip service to the mother's side of the story, a gambit that robs the picture of depth and ultimately minimizes its emotional punch.

| Aug 5, 2022

It expertly irrigates the tear ducts and caresses the heart strings. Yet it isn’t anywhere near as sticky in its sentiment as this year’s Jon Voight-Faye Dunaway remake of The Champ.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Aug 5, 2022

Certainly, no film has confronted the issue of children in wrecked marriages with such pointed perception, and not since Scenes from a Marriage has a movie captured the special anger of men and women caught in a domestic trap.

| Aug 5, 2022

Actors Dustin Hoffman and Meryl Streep and one of the most appealing child actors in a long time, Justin Henry, keep Kramer vs. Kramer high above the soap opera level it might so easily have reached in other hands.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Aug 5, 2022

Streep walks out on Hoffman, so where's the Other Man? There's a bitter custody battle. Who's the loser? By brilliant, painstaking and courageous design, Benton simply omits these elements.

| Aug 5, 2022

In a season filled with splashy special effects and sloppy comedy, it is a pleasure to welcome Kramer vs. Kramer, a film whose basic honesty glows like the flecks of gold in a piece of high grade ore.

| Aug 5, 2022

Kramer vs. Kramer is a magnificent piece of work, a film which seems practically flawless at every level of its execution. Above all, it owes much of its emotional impact to the matchless art of the director or photography, Néstor Almendros.

| Aug 4, 2022

By sticking to its point about reasonable, intelligent and serious-minded people at the end of their emotional tethers, the film's taut narrative displays a refreshing economy.

| Aug 4, 2022

What redeems it again and again is acting that runs truer to life than the story’s well-rounded artifice. It is one of the most sheerly acted films in years.

| Aug 4, 2022

Kramer vs. Kramer's manipulation of its audiences' emotions, though obvious, begs less questions than most. You don't feel you've been donned. And the performances are exceedingly good, with the feeling of reality close behind them.

| Aug 4, 2022

The writing and direction by Robert Benton is a model of concision; he captures the humanity of the situation without wasted motion or phony sentiment.

| Aug 4, 2022

Kramer vs Kramer is a lopsided, sudsy movie that coasts through on its father-appeal, its star-power and its easy-paced comedy and pathos, seldom firing our brains and hearts into a fresh response.

| Feb 4, 2020

It is lifted above the level of common tear-jerker by the same affectionate concern for character that distinguished Benton's early pictures, Bad Company and The Late Show.

| Feb 4, 2020

A triumph of partisan pathos, a celebration of father-son bonding that astutely succeeds were tearjerkers like "The Champ" so mawkishly failed.

| May 6, 2017

What Benton achieved with his screenplay he intensified with his direction. Each performance is a minor miracle of perfection - not only Hoffman's and Streep's, which dominate the picture, but each of the supporting roles as well.

| Dec 19, 2016

Kramer vs. Kramer is greatly enriched by its exceptional cast.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Feb 21, 2015