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Kramer vs Kramer Details

1979 Certificate PG
  • Rated:
  • 70
  • from 8228 members

Returning home late from work one night, a career-obsessed Ted Kramer is told by his wife, Joanna, that she is leaving him. After a lifetime of being somebody's wife, she's going off to find herself, leaving Ted to care for their six-year-old son. Ted, while trying to hold down his job, gets to really know his son as few .. Read more

Starring Dustin Hoffman, Meryl Streep, Justin Henry, Howard Duff
Director Robert Benton
Genres Drama

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Kramer vs Kramer

Returning home late from work one night, a career-obsessed Ted Kramer is told by his wife, Joanna, that she is leaving him. After a lifetime of being somebody's wife, she's going off to find herself, leaving Ted to care for their six-year-old son. Ted, while trying to hold down his job, gets to really know his son as few fathers do: cooking his meals, taking him to the park, understanding every need and fear. For the first time in his life he feels like a fulfilled parent. But then Joanna returns--and she wants her son back.

Starring Dustin Hoffman, Meryl Streep, Justin Henry, Howard Duff, Jane Alexander
Director Robert Benton
Studio UCA
Run time DVD: 1 hr 40 mins
Blu-ray: 1 hr 40 mins
Certificate Certificate PG
Genres Drama
Language DVD: English
Blu-ray: English
Dubbed French, German, Italian, Spanish
Subtitles DVD: Arabic, Bulgarian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Icelandic, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish
Blu-ray: Arabic, Bulgarian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Icelandic, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish
Released DVD: 10 Apr 2004
Blu-ray: 02 Feb 2009
Production year: 1979
Format DVD
  • Critics' reviews (2) of Kramer vs Kramer

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  • 4 stars out of 5

    Winner of the Oscar for best picture and scooping best actor and supporting actress statuettes for Dustin Hoffman and Meryl Streep, this runaway success now looks a little overwrought in places, but it is still an involving, moving and discerning study of the suffering endured by all embroiled in a divorce. You could cut the tension in the courtroom sequences with a knife, but writer/director Robert Benton deserves greatest credit for the truth and restraint of the scenes in which Hoffman tries to win over his six-year-old son, Justin Henry, which could so easily have become false and tacky.

    • Radio Times
  • A high class modern weepie. While Hoffman and Streep come to terms with divorce and battle over who gets the brat,... read more on Time Out

    • Time Out
  • Most helpful member's review of Kramer vs Kramer

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  • 15 out of 15 people found this review helpful

    * * * This review contains spoilers * * *ShowHide

    Rated - 4 stars

    moving tale

      • arun from Liverpool, UK
  • Most recent members' review of Kramer vs Kramer

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  • 5 out of 5 people found this review helpful

    Rated - 4 stars

    Realism with the sound turned down

    Unlike many Method-trained actors, Dustin Hoffman does not show it off. The quiet, complicated truthfulness with which he portrayed Ted Kramer (the career-high art director forced to bring up his son Billy alone when his wife Joanna (Meryl Streep) walks out) is very rare. His performance does not indulge in over-sympathetic sentimentality, and is the more moving for it. Custody battles are heart-breaking because, although the couple are no longer husband and wife, in the eyes of their child they are still, and will always be, mum and dad - the very bond the court is employed to break. Kramer vs Kramer acknowledges this - that life is more complicated than our bureaucratic systems would like to make it. Great film.

      • A customer from London, England
  • News and features

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    No Country for Old Men

    The Oscars 2008

    • 25 Feb 2008

    2007/8 will go down as a good vintage for American cinema, and last night the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences crowned a modern classic in the Coen brothers' No Country For Old Men: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Supporting Actor. As predicted, Paul Thomas Anderson's monumental There Will Be Blood was largely shut out of the awards losing in six of its eight categories. The principal exception was of course Daniel Day-Lewis's prize for Best Actor,... Read more

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Rating breakdown

8,228 Member ratings
  • 100
959
  • 90
905
  • 80
1,776
  • 70
1,594
  • 60
1,363
  • 50
734
  • 40
378
  • 30
240
  • 20
191
  • 10
88

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    • Kramer vs Kramer - BLU-RAY Version
    • Blu-Ray: £8.93
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    • RRP £19.99 (you save: 55%)
    • Joanna Kramer, a Manhattan housewife, can no longer face life with her husband Ted. She walks out leaving her son Billy in Ted's charge. Ted has to adjust his life and face up to his new found ...

    • Kramer vs Kramer
      Returning home late from work one night, a career-obsessed Ted Kramer is told by his wife, Joanna, that she is leaving him. After a lifetime of being somebody's wife, she's going off to find herself, leaving Ted to care for their six-year-old son. Ted, while trying to hold down his job, gets to ...