Kramer vs. Kramer movie review (1979) | Roger Ebert (2025)

"Kramer vs. Kramer" wouldn't be half as good as it is-- half as intriguing and absorbing -- if the movie had taken sides. Themovie's about a situation rich in opportunities for choosing up sides: adivorce and a fight for the custody of a child But what matters in a story likethis (in the movies and in real life, too) isn't who's right or wrong, but ifthe people involved are able to behave according to their own better nature.Isn't it so often the case that we're selfish and mean-spirited in just thosetricky human situations that require our limited stores of saintliness?

"Kramer vs. Kramer" is about just such a situation. Itbegins with a marriage filled with a lot of unhappiness, ego and selfishness,and ends with two single people who have both learned important things aboutthe ways they want to behave. There is a child caught in the middle -- theirfirst-grader, Billy -- but this isn't a movie about the plight of the kid butabout the plight of the parents.

Hollywoodhas traditionally approached stories like this from the child's point of view,showing him unhappy and neglected by the grownups -- but what if the grownupsaren't really grown up? What about a family in which everybody is stillbasically a kid crying for attention and searching for identity?

That'sthe case here. The movie stars Dustin Hoffman as a workaholic advertisingexecutive whose thoughts are almost entirely centered around his new account --so much so that when he comes home and his wife announces she's walking out ontheir marriage, he hardly hears her and doesn't really take her seriously. Buthis wife (Meryl Streep) is walking out. She needs time to find herself, shesays; to discover the unrealized person she left behind when she went into themarriage.

Rightaway we're close to choosing sides and laying blame: How can she walk out onher home and child? we ask. But we can't quite ask that question in allsincerity, because what we've already seen of Hoffman makes it fairly clear whyshe might have decided to walk out. She may be leaving the family but he'shardly been a part of it. Harassed, running late, taking his son to school onthe first day after his wife has left, he asks him: "What grade are youin?" It's the first. Hoffman didn't know.

Themovie leaves Streep offscreen during its middle passages, as Hoffman and thekid get to know each other, and as Hoffman's duties as a parent eventually leadto his firing at the ad agency. These scenes are the movie's mostheart-warming. The movie's writer and director, Robert Benton, has provided hischaracters with dialog that has the ring of absolute everyday accuracy, but inthe case of the kid (the young actor is named Justin Henry), he and Hoffmanreportedly decided to use improvisation where possible.

Situationsare set up and then the young boy is more or less left free to respond in hisown words, with Hoffman leading and improvising as well, and many moments havethe sense of unrehearsed real life.

Whatthat means is that we can see the father and son learning about each other andgrowing closer. Another movie might have hedged its bets, but "Kramer vs.Kramer" exists very close to that edge where real people are making realdecisions. And that's true, too, when the movie reaches its crisis point: whenthe Streep character returns and announces that now she feels ready to regaincustody of her son.

Bynow we have no inclination at all to choose sides. Our sympathies do tend to bewith the father -- we've seen him change and grow -- but now we are basicallyjust acting as witnesses to the drama. The movie has encouraged us to realizethat these people are deep enough and complex enough, as all people are, thatwe can't assign moral labels to them.

"Kramervs. Kramer" is a movie of good performances, and it had to be, because theperformances can't rest on conventional melodrama. Dustin Hoffman's acting isabout the best in his career, I think, and this movie should win him an AcademyAward nomination and perhaps the Oscar. His performance as Ratso in"Midnight Cowboy" (1970) might strike some people as better than thisone, but he had the advantage there of playing a colorful and eccentriccharacter. This time he's just a guy in a three-piece suit, trying to figureout the next 24 hours. One of his best scenes comes as he applies for a jobduring an ad agency's office Christmas party, and insists on an immediatedecision.

MerylStreep has certainly been having quite a year, and has appeared in what seemslike half the year's best female roles (so far she's been in "The DeerHunter," "The Seduction of Joe Tynan" and "Manhattan,"and "Holocaust" on TV). In "Kramer vs. Kramer," Bentonasked her to state her character's own case in the big scene where she arguesfor her child from the witness stand. She is persuasive, but then so is JaneAlexander, who plays her best friend, and whose character is a bystander andwitness as Hoffman slowly learns how to be a father.

Thisis an important movie for Robert Benton, who co-wrote "Bonnie andClyde" and also wrote and directed "Bad Company" and "TheLate Show." He spends a great deal of attention on the nuances of dialog:His characters aren't just talking to each other, they're revealing thingsabout themselves and can sometimes be seen in the act of learning about theirown motives. That's what makes "Kramer vs. Kramer" such a touchingfilm: We get the feeling at times that personalities are changing and decisionsare being made even as we watch them.