The Guardian, Derek Malcolm praised Lloyd for her "portrait is of a lively waif who does not intend to be easily defeated by the comedy of life without adding a few jokes of her own, and it is the most complete thing she has so far done on the screen, good as she was in Wish You Were Here". Time magazine felt that the script "perhaps pursues too many banal and inconsequential matters as it portrays teen life in a small town", but that "the film starts to gather force and direction when a dance, organized to honor the local Viet vets, works out awkwardly". Furthermore, its critic felt that the film was "a lovely, necessary little stitch in our torn time". In her review for The New York Times, Caryn James criticized the "cheap and easy touches ... that reduce it to the shallowness of a television movie", and found James Horner's score, "offensive and distracting". Newsweek magazine's David Ansen wrote, "While one can respect its lofty intentions, the movie doesn't seem to have any better sense than its high-school heroine of just what it's looking for. At once underdramatized and faintly stagy, it keeps promising revelations that never quite materialize". In her review for the Washington Post, Rita Kempley wrote, "What's meant to be a cohesive family portrait, a suffering American microcosm, is a shambles of threads dangling and characters adrift. Jewison leaves it to stymied viewers to figure out the gist of it". Peter Travers from the Rolling Stone magazine considered In Country as "one of the year’s most emotionally shattering films." References External links Films directed by Norman Jewison 1989 films 1989 drama films 1980s coming-of-age drama films American coming-of-age drama films Films about veterans Films based on American novels Films scored by James Horner Films shot in Kentucky Vietnam Veterans Memorial 1980s English-language films 1980s American films