Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3713 in DVD
• Released on: 2001-08-28
• Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
• Formats: Anamorphic, Subtitled, Color, Dubbed
• Original language: English, Spanish
• Subtitled in: English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Georgian, Chinese, Thai
• Dubbed in: French
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 105 minutes

Amazon.com essential video
Winner of five Academy Awards including Best Picture, Actor, and Screenplay, Kramer vs. Kramer remains as powerfully moving today as it was when released in 1979, simply because its drama will remain relevant for couples of any generation. Adapted by director Robert Benton from the novel by Avery Corman, this is perhaps the finest, most evenly balanced film ever made about the failure of marriage and the tumultuous shift of parental roles. It begins when Joanna Kramer (Meryl Streep) bluntly informs her husband Ted (Dustin Hoffman) that she's leaving him, just as his advertising career is advancing and demanding most of his waking hours. Self-involvement is just one of the film's underlying themes, along with the search for identity that prompts Joanna to leave Ted with their first-grade son (Justin Henry), who now finds himself living with a workaholic parent he barely knows. Juggling his domestic challenge with professional deadlines, Ted is further pressured when his wife files for custody of their son. This legal battle forms the dramatic spine of the film, but its power is derived from Benton's flawlessly observant script and the superlative performances of his entire cast. Because Benton refuses to assign blame and deals fairly with both sides of a devastating dilemma, the film arrives at equal levels of pain, growth, and integrity under emotionally stressful circumstances. That gives virtually every scene the unmistakable ring of truth--a quality of dramatic honestly that makes Kramer vs. Kramer not merely a classic tearjerker, but one of the finest American dramas of its decade. --Jeff Shannon

Customer Reviews

A poignant tale of growth and parenthood that still brings tears today...
There are many films about the deterioration of the marriage arrangement, but very few of them can reach the levels of emotional attachment that `Kramer vs. Kramer' manages to grasp hold of. To say that `Kramer vs. Kramer' doesn't still resonate today is a miscalculation if you ask me, for even if the eventual result is softer and or more delicate than is often the case in reality, there is so much truth in every frame that one can't help but draw comparisons to similar situations today.

The film tells the story of Ted Kramer, a successful advertising executive who just landed a huge account and a big promotion. His joyful celebration is cut short when he arrives home to find his wife Joanna packed and ready to leave. After a brief and vague explanation she walks out of Ted and their son Billy's life and Ted finds himself in a very strange and foreign situation. It is clear right from the start that Ted doesn't know how to be a caretaker, but what I love about Ted is that even at it's roughest he is always a father, for his love for Billy shines through even his most extreme shortcomings. As the months pass their relationship strengthens and Ted winds up being the parent he always was just didn't know how to express, and Billy is better off for it. But then Joanna returns, wanting custody of the son she abandoned and Ted finds himself in an even tighter spot as he fights to keep the son he's grown to appreciate.

`Kramer vs. Kramer' plays out like two films. The first have is a sweet and inspiring journey of a man coming into his own, understanding how to be a father and how to raise a child. It's the story of a man who possible took everything he had for granted, but the instant his world was turned upside down he fought to come to an accurate appreciation of life's gems.

The second half though is much more exhausting, as Joanna and Ted find themselves fighting over Billy in court. The ugly side of divorce is brought on strong, and it shifts the tone of the film drastically. It reminded me of the first time I saw `Million Dollar Baby', how the first act and the second act represented two very drastically different emotion tones; one part raising your spirits and the second part obliterating them. `Kramer vs. Kramer' surely ends on a soft and sweet note (although it still had me bawling) but that second act is still devastating in its own right.

`Kramer vs. Kramer' feels very short, which I actually believe works to its benefit. I often prefer films that really elaborate on each character and scene and build a life inside itself, but `Kramer vs. Kramer' doesn't need to stretch the clock to do that. It quickly, yet efficiently, fleshes out our main characters (namely Ted) and never allows itself to drag on long enough to bore us. It's like a sucker-punch to the gut; quick and undetectable yet brutally effective.

The performances here are amazing to say the least. Dustin Hoffman and Meryl Streep definitely deserved those Oscars, for their portrayals of Ted and Joanna carry this film through all of its emotional arcs. Jane Alexander is wonderful as family friend Margaret Phelps, and rightfully landed herself an Oscar nomination. Her testimony is one of the most touching scenes in the film. Oscar nominated Justin Henry is just unbelievably real as young Billy. His performance just wrecked me. His final scenes with Hoffman are some of the most tender and honest scenes in the entire film. I remember the scene where they make French Toast for the second time (probably the single greatest scene in the film for all of its symbolic expressions of growth in relationship between father and son) and feeling the tears streaming down my face because the scene was so effortless, so natural.

`Kramer vs. Kramer' is a flawless film that still stands tall as an inspiring and moving cinematic landmark. I'm so thrilled that the Academy showered this film with multiple Oscar wins, including Best Picture, Director, Screenplay, Lead Actor and Supporting Actress. There aren't many films out there today that have this sort of power.

Not aging well.
Kramer vs. Kramer (Robert Benton, 1979)

Okay, I'll admit it, almost thirty years later I wanted to see Kramer vs. Kramer again solely for the JoBeth Williams scene. Yes, I am shallow. It's all I really remembered from the movie, other than Meryl Streep's "I make thirty-one thousand dollars" speech. And it's just as much fun this time around as it was when I originally saw the movie over twenty-five years ago. (I'm obviously not the only one who thinks so; the first keyword for the movie at IMDB is "nude wearing glasses".) I was reminded, however, of much of the reason I seem to have forgotten the rest of the movie, which has not aged well at all.

Ted (Dustin Hoffman) and Joanna (Meryl Streep) Kramer are married with child, Billy (Justin Henry). All is not well in casa de Kramer, however, and Joanna runs off to find herself, leaving Ted with Billy. Ted, who has spent much of his time working and very little of it with Billy, has to learn to connect with the lil' bugger while simultaneously learning to be a single parent. Nine months and one lost job later, that's finally happened-- and then Joanna shows back up and wants custody of her kid. Cue dirty custody battle.

As enjoyable as the movie is on the surface-- and I certainly won't deny that the film is as well-acted as one would expect from a cast that includes not only the above but a whole host of the seventies A-list-- but Benton, adapting Avery Corman's novel for the big screen, manages to work in just about as many single-parent clichés and stereotypes as he possibly can. (Whether they were present in the novel or magically appeared in the script, I don't know.) Sure, he plays them wonderfully-- the recurring French-toast theme, for example-- but that doesn't make them any less cliché or stereotyped. Oh, look, here's the doofus dad who knows nothing about parenting! At least the idiotic Mr. Mom made no bones about the fact that it was idiotic. Kramer vs. Kramer wanted to pass itself off as intelligent comedy-drama, and did so well enough that it scored a Best Picture Oscar back when such a thing actually meant something. (Assuming it ever did, your call.) These days, cast and all, I wonder whether this movie would even make it to the theaters, or whether it would be sentenced to the Lifetime Movie Purgatory-- err, Network.

Yes, it's certainly a watchable film, if dated nowadays, but in the slightly more enlightened society in which we now live, I hope the script's defects are a lot clearer to those watching it now. ** ½

Another key cultural artifact
"Kramer vs. Kramer" is a perfect artifact that speaks to the discourses of the men's movement and the women's movement.