Word: fonda
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...playlets are quite dreary. In the weakest, Richard Pryor and Bill Cosby appear as vacationing Chicago doctors whose Los Angeles visit is ruined by slapstick mishaps involving torn clothing and wayward automobiles. It is a thin recap of an old Simon screenplay, The Out-of-Towners. Jane Fonda and Alan Alda fare only slightly better in their sketch. She plays a tart-tongued Newsweek editor who has flown West to fight with her ex-husband over the custody of their daughter...
After exchanging some worn New York vs. Los Angeles one-liners, far inferior to Woody Allen's in Annie Hall, Fonda and Alda get all bittersweet. The heroine's lacerating wit, it turns out, is but a mask for her insecurity. The superficial writing is not helped by Alda's unprepossessing screen presence, Ross's melodramatic use of closeups, or by a gratuitous beach scene that exists only to show off Fonda in a bikini...
Some plays would be rushed directly from the stage to an intensive-care unit were it not for a massive transfusion of star power. This season has offered several examples. First Monday in October and Tribute promptly expired with the departure of their respective stars, Henry Fonda and Jack Lemmon. Alexis Smith is giving nightly resuscitation to Platinum. And but for the sly insinuative charms and stylish expertise of Rex Harrison and Claudette Colbert, The Kingfisher would swiftly be recognized for the plucked Broadway turkey that...
...Henry Fonda, on his failings as a father: "It is only in the last two years that I have been able to say I love you' to my children. Of course I have loved them since they were born...
...technical level, there is nothing in Comes a Horseman to be embarrassed about: Pakula seems incapable of visual sloppiness or vulgarity. He has also coaxed a performance from Fonda that is superior to her rather saintly appearances in Julia and Coming Home. Her face as weatherbeaten as her dad's in The Grapes of Wrath, this beautiful woman manages to capture the essence of frontier toughness in the film's first half. When she finally melts for a man, Fonda's blushing radiance almost melts a movie that has long since congealed. - Frank Rich