Male Soap Opera

Long after it should be dead at the box office, Kramer vs. Kramer is still thriving. It is not hard to figure out why. Kramer vs. Kramer is a film with a subject to wrench the heart—a failed New York marriage and a painful child-custody suit. It features two superb actors, Dustin Hoffman and Meryl Streep, as Ted and Joanna Kramer, plus an affecting child, Justin Henry, as their son Billy; and under writer-director Robert Benton’s control, the film moves at a vignette pace that never bores.

A second viewing of Kramer vs. Kramer makes all this success hard to take. For at bottom what it shows is that Kramer vs. Kramer is soap opera brought to the screen. The only difference is that the movie has reversed the standard soap op...