Writing in VL-8/86, reviewer Donald Liebenson said: “A curious hybrid of a movie, whose parts are greater than the whole, the first half of Joyce Chopra’s 1985 Smooth Talk is a vivid portrait of one teenage girl's burgeoning sexuality and alienation from her family. Joyce Carol Oates’ open-ended 1966 short story “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” has been fleshed out with a remarkably fresh performance by Laura Dern as the small-town tease with “trashy daydreams,” who frequents the local mall with her girlfriends.
But the film becomes a psychological horror show when her shameless flirting attracts the attention of an older man who visits her one summer afternoon while her family is away. Treat Williams as Arnold Friend (“That's my name and that's what I want to be to you”) is riveting, an adolescent girl's fantasy turned nightmare. Both performances are haunting in their ring of truth, and the enigmatic ending will certainly spark discussion. This small, independent film has an emotional honesty lacking in mainstream Hollywood films about adolescents.”
Making its second appearance on Blu-ray, in a sparkling 4K digital restoration, this Criterion Collection edition features extras including a conversation with Chopra, Oates, and Dern from the 2020 New York Film Festival (moderated by TCM host Alicia Malone), a new interview with Chopra, a new interview with production designer David Wasco, a 1985 interview with Chopra, three short films by Chopra (1972’s “Joyce at 34,” 1975’s “Girls at 12,” and 1976’s “Clorae and Albie”), an audio reading of the1966 Life magazine article “The Pied Piper of Tucson” (which inspired Oates’ short story), and a booklet with an essay by poet Honor Moore, a 1986 New York Times article by Oates about the adaptation, and Oates’s original short story. Recommended.