Synopsis
Wendell Lawson has only six months to live. Not wanting to endure his last few months of life waiting for the end, he decides to take matters into his own hands and enlists the help of a delusional mental patient to help him commit suicide.
Your Movie Library
Cast
- Burt ReynoldsWendell Sonny Lawson
- Dom DeLuiseMarlon Borunki
- Sally FieldMary Ellen
- Strother MartinDr. Waldo Kling
- David SteinbergMarty Lieberman
- Joanne WoodwardJessica Lawson
- Norman FellDr. Samuel Krugman
- Myrna LoyMaureen Lawson
- Kristy McNicholJulie Lawson
- Pat O’BrienBen Lawson
Recommendations
- 70
Time Out
An engaging attempt to take the piss out of the crocodile tears that have been gleefully exploited since Love Story. - 50
The Dissolve
Eventually, the film’s old-fashioned, shtick-friendly tone stops seeming charming and becomes exhausting because DeLuise exerts so much effort where none is necessary. - 50
The New York Times
This is half-heartedly satiric material that's been directed by Mr. Reynolds as if it were broad, knock-about comedy sometimes and, at other times, as if it were meant to evoke pathos, which it never does. - 50
TV Guide Magazine
The film veers wildly from decent black comedy to dumb slapstick, and director Reynolds seems unsure of his own intentions. In a few places this film is quite funny, however, although De Luise and all the scenes he's in are unbearable. - 50
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
An absurdist comedy such as The End, with the tone teetering from slapstick to sorrow, is quite another matter, requiring a sophistication Reynolds simply doesn't have. [27 May 1978] - 50
Newsweek
The End initially promises to answer in disturbing comic form, mixing pathos and pratfalls to fashion a pitch-black comedy about a man freaking out on the edge of oblivion. But in the face of such a risky subject, director-star Reynolds and writer Jerry Belson get cold feet. [22 May 1978, p.72] - 50
Washington Post
The End never really lives up to its beginning. It's much too long and, after a while, the one-track theme - how a man reacts when he's suddenly told he has less than three months to live - begins to get old. [26 May 1978, p.20] - 30
Variety
Production is a tasteless and overripe comedy that disintegrates very early into hysterical, undisciplined hamming.
