Steven Spielberg's old-fashioned Prestige Picture, a literary adaptation of both a critical and a popular success, and one with tie-ins to both the black and feminist communities. These last connections give the director a chance finally to apply the universe-embracing ideals of Close Encounters and E.T., not just to imaginary beings from other planets, but to Real People, a chance furthermore to fend off murmurous accusations of white-boy chauvinism and xenophobia, roused especially by the Indiana Jones adventures -- a chance, in short, to launch a lethal stone into a whole flock of predatory birds. But one had suspected that he had not hitherto been faking it or forcing it, had not been cheapening himself, as it were, in order just to enrich himself. One had suspected all along that that was the real him. Admittedly there are no special effects to speak of here (notwithstanding a Close Encounters-ish swirl of clouds) and no extraterrestrials (notwithstanding an eerie effect of ambulatory sunflowers, like something out of War of the Worlds). But at the same time there is no curb on Spielberg's rampant sentimentality either, and there is as always a sort of table-pounding emphasis in the storytelling. Indeed there is more emphasis than story, and you can easily lose sight of the Alice Walker narrative beneath the muscle-flexing low angles, sideways-gliding tracking shots, over-the-moon crane shots, hundred-mile-an-hour focal changes, and other assorted directorial methods of saying "Hey, look at me!" With Whoopi Goldberg, Danny Glover, and Margaret Avery. (1985) — Duncan Shepherd