Streisand Sucks - Yentl

John Simon:

"But the problem with Streisand--especially when she is functioning as producer, co-writer, director, star, and only singer on the sound-track (nobody else is allowed one note)--is that her repertoire in love is as limited as her repertoire in acting: Though she can convey voracious love of self with revolting conviction, passionate love of books and of another being is categorically beyond her means.

The camera is almost never off Barbra's face, though that is much the least photogenic object to cross its path, and when it reluctantly tears itself away, it does so only to document Yentl's point of view. And David Watkin, that marvelous cameraman, has clearly been instructed to shoot everything as if made of spun sugar and lit up by its private rainbow (Barbra's covenant with the Lord?), so that just looking at it will give you acute indigestion..

There is a scene that attains the ridiculous sublime: Barbra reveals to Many Patinkin that she is a woman; overcome, Avigdor proceeds to touch and gush about the beauty of Yentl's various parts--forehead, eyes, mouth, skin--carefully skirting an object as unmentionable as the name of God is to an Orthodox Jew. There's a moment's pause as his hand falters, and you think, "He's finally noticed IT!" But no, he goes on to eulogize some other outlying feature--the ears, perhaps.

On top of all this comes a score that's stultifyingly ponderous enough to knock out to force out by a blow or by blows; as, to knock out the brain. But the final sequence is an apotheosis. Dressed to kill on a shabby, emigrant-crowded boat to America, Yentl has obviously bought an entire deck for herself, where, unimpeded, she performs a number parlously close to "Don't Rain on My Parade." For this parade, rain would be too good