SOURCE: Benson, Sheila. “Starlight, Star Bright, 1st Starman to Alight.” Los Angeles Times (13 December 1984): section 6, pp. 1, 8.

In the following review, Benson praises Starman as “a sweet surprise,” describing the film as a playful and visually beautiful love story.

A sweet surprise comes our way with Starman. Director John Carpenter, whose beautiful visual sense is usually trained on something thoroughly unpleasant (such as the Thing, or dripping ghouls shrouded in seaweed), has gone straight. And like the sweetness at the heart of Cocteau's Beast, Carpenter has turned out to be a romantic pussycat.

With the exceptional performances of Jeff Bridges, Karen Allen and Charles Martin Smith and Carpenter's pure, uncluttered spaces, this straight-ahead, simple story of a starman come gently to Earth to observe becomes a chance for us to see ourselves at our most beautiful.

Not at our most hospitable, heaven knows, or our least xenophobic, but as...