Critical Reception
Critics of the film have been generally split about it. Leonard Maltin felt that while the film was a "humorous and sad depiction of marital breakdown," the cast was let down by a script which "seems uncertain as to what point it wants to drive across," (Maltin, 1991: 769). Steven Scheuer concurred somewhat with Maltin, saying that while the film was "occasionally amusing" it also tended to be "generally heavy-handed," (Scheuer, 1990: 672).
Roger Greenspun generally found the picture to be miscast, especially Richard Benjamin, feeling that while he is "a good comedian miscast ," (Greenspun, 1971). He also thought that the film was closer to an "unsuccessful television pilot," than a movie, in terms of its treatment of themes such as "sexual mechanics, the mechanics of marital supremacy, the nuclear family as a machine for getting on in the suburbs," (Greenspun, 1971). Perhaps the most telling critique of the film comes from Leslie Halliwell, who thought that it was a "sardonic adult comedy of the battle of the sexes," (Halliwell, 2000: 522).
Read more about this topic: The Marriage Of A Young Stockbroker
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