30
Though it's meant as a droll comedy of manners, what emerges is mincing, crabbed, and petty.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
100
Chicago Tribune by Gene Siskel
More than a great love story. It's both a lighthearted and deeply impassioned inspirational lesson about life. [4 April 1986]
90
Perhaps the primary reason A Room With a View is so involving is that Ivory has cast the film perfectly, and given each of the actors ample room to breathe. Even the characters you're not supposed to like are allowed their moments of vulnerable humanity.
70
Wall Street Journal by Julie Salamon
It's all rather amusing, but after awhile you tire of all the perfect little nuances about characters who seem like prototypes for a certain type of Victorian novel. [6 Mar 1986, p.23(E)]
90
Two cheers, at least, for permitting the past to appear not as a stern lesson but as a delicious irrelevance. [10 Mar 1986]
100
Chicago Sun-Times by Roger Ebert
A Room with a View enjoys its storytelling so much that I enjoyed the very process of it. The story moved slowly, it seemed, for the same reason you try to make ice cream last: because it's so good.
60
The New Republic by Stanley Kauffmann
Bonham Carter is like an undergraduate in a university production who seems rather good considering that her performance is only an intelligent diversion while she prepares herself for a career in another field. [24 Mar 1986]
A delightful adaptation of EM Forster's romantic novel, improving on the source material in a multitude of ways, especially by making several characters more sympathetic. Helena Bonham Carter is extremely charming in her film debut, but this really is an ensemble movie, with many impressive performances and famous faces popping up.