Stanley Kauffmann

“.... Laszlo Kovacs doesn't know how to photograph his two stars…. Liza Minnelli, difficult to like at best, comes out looking like a giant rodent en route to a costume ball….

“…. [T]he picture is clobbered from the start. The long first scene is at a victory dance in a hotel ballroom. De Niro is trying to pick up girl and makes his strongest pitch for Minnelli. The scene absolutely depends on charm, but Minnelli has none, ever, and De Niro is not a personality actor, he's an actor…. De Niro … becomes a nuisance in the scene, somehow degraded in taste because he zooms in so ferociously on this pokey-looking girl.

“A great deal more in this picture absolutely depends on charm; from both; supplied by neither.

“Martin Scorsese, the director, says that some people complain that Minnelli reminds them of her mother, Judy Garland, but there's nothing he can do about that. Two things he could have done in her last song are: not give her, or permit, hyperdramatic Garland gestures; not give her a costume that strongly suggests Garland's costume for the "Get Happy" number of Summer Stock. [The costume notwithstanding, isn’t it possible that Minnelli performs in her own, albeit inherited, style? Does it matter that Garland did it first?]

“…. Minnelli ... seems to have interested [Scorsese] much less [than De Niro] although she has an equally big part….

“Charm. This picture, faults and all, might have been pleasant if it had some. De Niro doesn't sell it. Minnelli doesn't have it. Scorsese doesn't comprehend it. So NY, NY is NG, NG.

Stanley Kauffmann
New Republic, July 23, 1977
Before My Eyes, 203-205