[David]

Originally Posted by strandinthewind

could it beeeee that it was all sooooooooooooooooooo simple then . . .

Matters are not helped by Barbra Streisand's performance. Sydney Pollack, the director, has tried to tone down her brashness & shrillness, but has hardly made a dent in that basic pugnacious charmlessness that is beyond redemption. The difficulty is that even when Miss Streisand labors to appear sensitive & vulnerable, she cannot conquer our impression that, were she to collide with a Mack truck, it is the truck that would drop dead. And, as always, I am repelled by her looks; by the receding brow & the overcompensatory nose, which, unlike Cleopatra's in Pascal's famous dictum, would not, even if it were shorter, change the face of the earth -- merely blot out a smaller part of it.

--John Simon reviewing "The Way We Were," January 1974