SOURCE: Kauffmann, Stanley. “Stanley Kauffmann on Films.” New Republic 164, no. 17 (24 April 1971): 20.

In the following review, Kauffmann commends Forman's artistic vision in Taking Off, but argues that the film lacks consistency and direction.

Milos Forman had an interesting idea in Taking Off. He wanted to do a film about the generation gap that made its point primarily through pictures. The content of most films, particularly the ones with social themes, is usually conveyed in words and story. Taking Off has words and a story, of course, but they are only the scaffolding for the purely cinematic elements, which really state the theme.

Forman is a young Czech director (Loves of a Blonde, The Firemen's Ball), now working in the US. For a time, I enjoyed what he was doing here in this first American film of his, and I also had some of the same feeling one gets from...