Reception
The film received mostly negative reviews.
Owen Gleiberman, of Entertainment Weekly, rated the film 'F', stating that Brenda "... comes off as a giggly (if spectacularly elongated) high school princess.", and that "Brenda Starr is so flaccid and cheap-looking, so ineptly pieced together, that it verges on the avant-garde. I suspect they won't even like it in France." Peter Travers of Rolling Stone magazine gave the film an equally negative review, stating "There's been so much negative insider buzz about Brooke's 'Brenda' that you might be harboring a hope that the damned thing turned out all right. Get over it. 'Brenda' is not as bad as the also-rans that Hollywood traditionally dumps on us before Labor Day ... it's a heap worse."
The New York Times' Janet Maslin stated "This would-be comic romp is badly dated in several conspicuous ways. Its cold war villains are embarrassingly outre (even allowing for the film's 1940's look, in keeping with the peak popularity of Brenda Starr as a comic strip heroine)... Most dated of all is Brenda herself, the "girl reporter" who worries chiefly about not running her stockings or breaking her high heels, and who in one scene actually uses a black patent leather handbag as a secret weapon."
Pamela Bruce, of The Austin Chronicle, was highly critical of the film, stating that "After gathering dust for five years, some studio executive decided that there just isn't enough dreck in the world and decided to unleash Brenda Starr upon us poor, unsuspecting mortals."
Read more about this topic: Brenda Starr (film)
Famous quotes containing the word reception:
“To aim to convert a man by miracles is a profanation of the soul. A true conversion, a true Christ, is now, as always, to be made by the reception of beautiful sentiments.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“He’s leaving Germany by special request of the Nazi government. First he sends a dispatch about Danzig and how 10,000 German tourists are pouring into the city every day with butterfly nets in their hands and submachine guns in their knapsacks. They warn him right then. What does he do next? Goes to a reception at von Ribbentropf’s and keeps yelling for gefilte fish!”
—Billy Wilder (b. 1906)
“To the United States the Third World often takes the form of a black woman who has been made pregnant in a moment of passion and who shows up one day in the reception room on the forty-ninth floor threatening to make a scene. The lawyers pay the woman off; sometimes uniformed guards accompany her to the elevators.”
—Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)