Reception
The Runner Stumbles opened to mixed to negative reviews. Janet Maslin, writing in The New York Times, complained: “The movie's ethics are...so hazy, and its attention to religion so perfunctory, that it almost seems as if this were a story about something else that had been transferred, as an afterthought, to a Church setting...Mr. Kramer treats the film's religious questions as afterthoughts, and too often achieves a dispirited, noncommittal tone.”
Roger Ebert, writing in the Chicago Sun-Times, considered the film to be “a little silly,” but added that “in its relentlessly old-fashioned way, "The Runner Stumbles" has a sort of dramatic persistence: It's not great, but it's there.” Variety criticized the film for being “presented in such a way that, at times, it appears like the best of the old-fashioned 1940s tear jerkers complete with overly lush sound track.”
The Runner Stumbles was not commercially successful, and it turned out to be Kramer's last film. It had a brief VHS video release, but to date it has not been released on DVD.
Read more about this topic: The Runner Stumbles
Famous quotes containing the word reception:
“But in the reception of metaphysical formula, all depends, as regards their actual and ulterior result, on the pre-existent qualities of that soil of human nature into which they fall—the company they find already present there, on their admission into the house of thought.”
—Walter Pater (1839–1894)
“I gave a speech in Omaha. After the speech I went to a reception elsewhere in town. A sweet old lady came up to me, put her gloved hand in mine, and said, “I hear you spoke here tonight.” “Oh, it was nothing,” I replied modestly. “Yes,” the little old lady nodded, “that’s what I heard.””
—Gerald R. Ford (b. 1913)
“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)