Avis Metacritic

A big, slick melodrama that knows exactly what it wants to accomplish and does so with great craft.

Bobby Deerfield is a brilliantly unusual love story, told in a European fashion which makes the Sydney Pollack film at first irritating, then intriguing, finally most rewarding and emotionally satisfying.

Don't be fooled by the action-packed DVD cover: Pacino spends roughly five minutes of Deerfield racing, and two hours learning, from a woman facing death, how to embrace life.

This gorgeously shot film is a trifle long at just over two hours; much of the racing footage could have been dispensed with, along with the sudsiest of the emotions.

Bobby Deerfield is not so much a failed vanity project as it is a groping, often sensitive and rather death-obsessed character study based on Erich Maria Remarque’s fatalistically titled novel Heaven Has No Favorites.

Even though Alvin Sargent's script lacks both grace and plausibility and director Sydney Pollack has succumbed to pretentions of European artiness, star chemistry might have made this love story catch fire. [03 Oct 1977, p. 71]

Big, expensive, ultimately ridiculous movie that appears to have been constructed to be a Love Story on wheels.

As grand prix driver Bobby Deerfield, actor Al Pacino plays claim of a man whose protective shell is cracked by a dying woman named Lillian (Marthe Keller). Unfortunately, the emotional coming-out tastes as flat as old soda and makes for a tale with all the torrid firepower of a recycled Love Story. [28 Oct 1977, p.11]

An uncoordinated tear jerker certain to double up cynics and touch only those fans who prefer their favorites lost in a narcissistic fog. [26 Oct 1977, p.B1]

A rich-meets-rich picture, and worse than one imagines. Al Pacino gives a torpid performance as a spiritually depleted Grand Prix racing-car driver who falls in love with a well-heeled free spirit (Marthe Keller), a metaphysical kook.