Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Crichton, Michael (Vol. 90) - David Denby (review date 16 November 1981)

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David Denby (review date 16 November 1981)

SOURCE: "The Wizards of ID," in New York Magazine, Vol. 14, No. 45, November 16, 1981, p. 118.

[In the following excerpt, Denby unfavorably reviews Looker.]

Will Michael Crichton ever make a really good movie? Crichton, the author of The Andromeda Strain and other scientific-medical thrillers and the director of Westworld, Coma, and The Great Train Robbery, is a clever fellow with a talent for conventional suspense and a fondness for slightly bizarre stories about technology run amok. The Great Train Robbery, his most assured work as a director, was overpadded and smug, but at least it had some big-movie sweep and detail, and its Victorian setting took Crichton away from his machinery fetish—the computer screens and dials, the research-lab corridors. But now, in Looker, Crichton is back in the corridor: Half the movie consists of people stalking up and down...

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1. Introduction
2. ∗Principal Works
3. Criticism
   1. Pauline Kael (review date 9 November 1981)
   2. David Denby (review date 16 November 1981)
   3. Gary Jennings (review date 11 November 1990)
   4. Ronald Preston (review date 21 November 1990)
   5. J. P. Telotte (essay date 1990)
   6. Robert Nathan (review date 9 February 1992)
   7. Ian Buruma (review date 23 April 1992)
   8. Karl Taro Greenfeld (review date 11 May 1992)
   9. Julian Loose (review date 22 October 1992)
   10. Stephen Jay Gould (review date 12 August 1993)
   11. Christopher Lehmann-Haupt (review date 6 January 1994)
   12. John Schulian (review date 16 January 1994)
   13. Patt Morrison (review date 16 January 1994)
   14. Julie Burchill (review date 22 January 1994)
   15. Geraldine Brennan (review date 30 January 1994)
   16. Douglas Kennedy (review date 4 February 1994)
   17. Michael Coren (review date 21 February 1994)
   18. Francine Prose (review date October 1994)
   19. Publishers Weekly (review date 21 August 1995)
   20. Mark Annichiarico (review date 15 September 1995)
   21. Mim Udovitch (review date 1 October 1995)
4. Further Reading
5. Copyright