(out of 4) "The famous Barbra adaptation of Isaac Bashevis Singer's story set in the 1900s Eastern Europe about a Jewish girl who masquerades as a boy in order to study the Talmud, and who becomes enmeshed in romantic miscues. Lushly photographed, with a repetitive score by Alan and Marilyn Bergman and Michael Legrand that nevertheless won an Oscar. Singer was reportedly appalled at the results of Streisand's hypercontrolled project."--VideoHound's Golden Movie Retriever Rated PG 134m DIR: Barbra Streisand. CAST: Barbra Streisand, Mandy Patinkin, Amy Irving, Nehemiah Persoff, Steven Hill, Allan Cordunner, Ruth Goring, David DeKeyser, Bernard Spear. Academy Awards 1983: Best Original Score. Nominations: Best Art Direction/Set Direction, Best Song ('Papa, Can You Hear Me?, 'The Way He Makes Me Feel'), Best Supporting Actress (Irving) Golden Globe Awards 1983: Best Director (Streisand), Best Film, Musical/Comedy. 1983   "As Hadass, Amy Irving embodies what is supposed to be the feminine ideal of the time, in contrast to the feisty Yentl. Hadass is the demure fiancee of Avigdor (Mandy Patinkin), a fellow Yeshiva student to whom Yentl is desperately attracted. When it is decreed that Avigdor may not marry his doll-like sweetheart, whom he adores for the way she waits on him hand and foot, Yentl-Anshel is recruited for the role of bridegroom. This may sound like a morass of sexual ambiguity, but that's not the way it plays. If anything, the movie is curiously devoid of sexual overtones, seeing masculinity strictly as a form of power, femininity as oppression, and unrequited lust as a good thing for Miss Streisand to sing about at periodic intervals... In the scene that has Yentl finally confessing her secret to Avigdor, the light descends unflatteringly from above, perhaps suggesting that a ray of truth is falling on the characters, and perhaps suggesting a studio with a broken window. ''Yentl'' works best during its middle sequences, when the audience has been caught up in the premise and in the Yentl-Avigdor romance. Mr. Patinkin is warm and personable here, and he and Miss Streisand share some affecting moments. But the film begins laboriously, and the note on which it ends is a dreadful one."--Janet Maslin, The New York Times