Molly Haskell

“…. Diane Keaton, Sissy Spacek, and Jessica Lange as the three wacky MaGrath "girls" are the brightest screen family since Hannah and Her Sisters.

“Actually, the lives of these three Mississippi sisters may be closest to the prose of the National Enquirer. Lenny (Keaton) is the plain sister with the "shrunken ovary" and the withered ego….

“….[T]he film's most infectious moments hover on the quicksilver border between tears and giggles…. [When Lenny and Babe tell Meg about Grandaddy's going into a coma:] Suddenly and intutitively they all shift gears: Spacek and Keaton collapse in hysterical laughter; Lange is dumbfounded. One feels the mysterious rhythms and alternating alliances of three-way sisterhood, the on-again-off-again love and rivalry of relationships that are difficult because every moment is a recapitulation of the past.

“Of the three actresses, Spacek is closet to being a great one. . . . Keaton is a surprise. Paradoxically, even as she plays a hysterical, insecure woman, she hasn't been this modulated and sure of herself since her Woody Allen films.

“Beresford's heroines are often vigorous non-conformists in exotic subcultures….”

Molly Haskell
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