Avis Metacritic

Delightfully inventive, consistently funny, clever but not slick, brisk yet never antic, Quick Change is the perfect cinematic date - a summer film for all seasons, the kind of sharp-edged picture that gives lightweight a good name. [14 Jul 1990, p.C3]

The comedy of Quick Change is city-dweller humor, honed to a fine edge and site-specific to New York because the Big Apple is more or less on its knees, civility-wise. All it needs is a lethally funny comedy like this to give it the coup de grace. [13 Jul 1990, p.1]

Quick Change is a funny but not an inspired comedy. It has two directors - Howard Franklin and Bill Murray - and I wonder if that has anything to do with its inability to be more than just efficiently entertaining.

It's a particularly great pleasure to encounter Quick Change, a wonderfully loose and graceful character comedy. [13 Jul 990, p.C]

What's surprising about Quick Change, particularly in light of his more recent mega-budget efforts, is its witty affability. [15 Jul 1990, p.34]

Bill Murray delivers a smart, sardonic and very funny valentine to the rotten Apple in Quick Change. Pic became Murray's directing debut after he and Franklin became too attached to the project to bring anyone else in. Material, based on Jay Cronley's book, is neither ambitious nor particularly memorable, but it's brought off with a sly flair that makes it most enjoyable.

As a screenplay -- as a story -- Change is a silly mess. Its direction is also perfunctory, a bland rendition of the usual chain of Hollywood events. But the main reason to watch Change is for Murray, of course. And no matter what formulaic claptrap is around him, he always redeems it with something comic.

As a performer, Murray moves through the film with a lovely doomed aplomb. And his quick verbal wit is almost enough to pull Quick Change off. But as a director, his inexperience costs him. His camera isn't as quick as his tongue. [13 Jul 1990, p.29]

In films like Quick Change, he is bogged down by scripts that don't begin to match his comic imagination. Even though he chose and developed Quick Change himself, Bill Murray deserves better than this clunky, stereotypical comedy.

Derivative and blindingly dull, Quick Change is an occasion for a quick nap.