[In] their efforts to give [That Cold Day in the Park] what they believe to be contemporary audience appeal the makers have injected a vast dose of ill-assorted spices into what could have been a small, well-observed and unsentimentalised modern Marty. Included are the apparently essential ingredients of: nudity and sex, with a detailed examination at a birth control clinic, hints of incest, and prostitution; contemporary stock characters such as a draft dodger and hippie type drop-outs; and of course a pot smoking sequence. All these ingredients are in this context unnecessary embellishments which add little to the story and seem to have been included solely with an eye to the box office—a gesture which hasn't paid off. (p. 85)

Despite the weaknesses of the script the American director Robert Altman … keeps one's attention from wandering; although he is unable to create the necessary sense of tension and...