Stephen Schiff

“It’s a rather slight story, really, and a bit precious. Each character is accorded a dream or delusion … The dreams are symmetrical. Lou’s balances Sally’s; he idealizes her into the classy beauty evey kingpin longs for, and she imagines him as the wordly gent who can initiate her into the good life….

“I suppose the tone of Atlantic City is what one would call ‘stagy,’ and stagy is stagy is something a movie ought never be. And yet in this one, most of what should be wrong turns out to be quite right….

“Likewise, the film is miscast, and yet perfectly so…. And Susan Sarandon has her usual problem. One of the wittiest, most intelligent actresses in Hollywood, she keeps getting cast as a cow-eyed dummy, and you can always spot the disparity. Sarandon doesn’t live inside her characters, she sees through them; her slack jaw and nasal line readings appear feigned. In Atlantic City, she’s never convincing as a vacant bunny who doesn’t know which fork to use. But it’s hard to credit the dreams of a dunce anyway, and so one is grateful that Sarandon’s Sally seems smarter than Guare has written her.”

“Stranger still is the performance of Burt Lancaster….”

Stephen Schiff
The Boston Phoenix, April 21, 1981