[Only Children] is dull because it is about dull people…. The dull people are kept under tight rein to serve Lurie's thematic ends, which, in tune with the holiday setting, are about American childishness and American materialism….

Bill is stingy, dull, unimaginative, and responsible. Dan is generous, lively, fanciful, and self-indulgent; another sensual Jew of large physical dimensions…. One wonders, alas, if the old stereotypes have given way to a new one, more flattering, I suppose, but quite as threatening as what it replaces.

The women, too, are clichés….

The adults talk a lot about proper conduct, but being inwardly, as the title implies, still only children, they play games with each other. Their three children, who are, in another sense, only children, and very isolated only children at that, try to work their way through the verbal hypocrisies of their parents, and learn as they watch...