(3 of 3)
This is a new role for Emma, but one that she is entirely up for. Her ability to cope with each new child and all of Flap's croupy vagaries suggests that somehow even a so-so family life actually makes happy her destiny. If this were an ordinary comedy, that medium-sized irony would have been enough to satisfy its creator and send the audience home happy. But Brooks has one more question in mind. Could these two find it in themselves to reverse this role reversal one more time and arrive at a balanced acceptance of each other? Emma's illness provides the occasion for that final adjustment. Inevitably her growing weakness draws the young woman back toward childish dependency, and the need to defend her daughter against suffering summons forth Aurora's old ferocity. Whether she is questioning empty medical pieties or keeping poor Flap shaped up ("One of the nicest qualities about you is that you always recognized your weaknesses; don't lose that quality when you need it most") or bullying the nurse into administering a delayed sedative, MacLaine achieves a kind of cracked greatness, climax to a brave, bravura performance. Winger has an uncanny instinct for inhabiting a role, for implying that she knows even more about the character than words permit.
But then there are no bad performances, no slack scenes, no inattention of any kind in Terms of Endearment. The impulse in praising a film for which there are almost no analogies is to define it by what it is not, but that is really not good enough. It deserves some blunt declaration of respect and unguarded affection. Therefore, these three: no film since Preston Sturges was a pup has so shrewdly appreciated the way the eccentric plays hide-and-seek with the respectable in the ordinary American landscape; no comedy since Annie Hall or Manhattan has so intelligently observed not just the way people live now but what's going on in the back of their minds; and finally, and in full knowledge that one may be doing the marketing department's job for them, it is the best movie of the year.
—By Richard Schickel