EDITH MILTON
[Only Children] is dull because it is about dull people…. The dull people are kept under tight rein to serve Lurie's thematic ends, which, in tune with the holiday setting, are about American childishness and American materialism….
Bill is stingy, dull, unimaginative, and responsible. Dan is generous, lively, fanciful, and self-indulgent; another sensual Jew of large physical dimensions…. One wonders, alas, if the old stereotypes have given way to a new one, more flattering, I suppose, but quite as threatening as what it replaces.
The...
Source: Contemporary Literary Criticism, ©1981 Gale Cengage. All Rights Reserved. Full copyright.
(The entire page is 305 words.)
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