David Denby

"….[The] characters rarely break free of cliché…. Jeanie … is the survivor, the responsible one who tries to hold things together. Jodie Foster, blond hair falling straight down, plays her with a husky voice, a knowing eye, and a tolerant, richly understanding manner, as if Jeanie had already gone through everything and wanted nothing more for herself. It’s an oddly patronizing and embarrassing performance for an actress not yet out of her teens. Even a heavy-weather specialist like Susan Hayward was cheery and young before adopting the gin-soaked voice and bleary despair of her later performances. When Foster delivers a monologue about accepting the reality of pain and when she addresses the dead Annie at graveside, Foxes becomes a sanctimonious fraud: Annie has been killed off in order to give Jodie Foster a chance to act mature….”

David Denby
New York, March 10, 1980