Alice Doesn't Live Here Any More is a [slick] Hollywood comedy, taken from [an] artificial, highly structured script by Robert Getchell. However, since it was directed by Martin Scorsese, the talented dynamo who made Mean Streets, the film has a raw energy that shatters some of the script's contrivances…. Alice Graham is a survivor, a woman with an enterprising spirit and a resilient sense of humor. (p. 415)
[But] Alice Doesn't Live Here Any More cannot be taken very seriously as a study of a contemporary woman…. [The] heroine's limited potential radically limits the scope of the film. At first Alice seems determined to make it on her own, but in the end, after a few crummy jobs as a barroom singer and waitress, she decides to settle down with Kris Kristofferson, a tranquil, warm-hearted Arizona rancher. Although she plans to continue with her singing career, she gives up her dream of returning to Monterey, the town where she started out as a singer. Some women have criticized the ending as a copout, but that misses the point; the whole movie is a copout because Alice's career ambitions are so unrealistic to begin with. She has no real singing talent; her obsession with singing springs from a childhood infatuation with Alice Faye, and she refuses to grow up.
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