Pauline Kael

“…. The plot lacks the mechanical ingenuity of Back to the Future…, yet the characters are almost as superficial. Coppola's efforts to bring depth to this material that has no depth make the picture seem groggy. It's as if he were trying to reach through a veil of fog, trying to direct the actors to bring something out of themselves when neither he nor anyone else knows what's wanted.

“Kathleen Turner gives her role a good try, but she's miscast, or, rather, it's an unwritten part--Peggy Sue doesn't exist except to worry about marrying the right man. And Turner looks self-conscious and embarrassed. She always seems to be doing something telegraphic--to be acting, acting. For most of the movie, she's supposed to be not quite eighteen, and she's trying to act young--one of the toughest things to do on camera. It's especially tough for her, because she's a womanly big woman poured into tight teen-age-schoolgirl dresses. I don't know why Coppola or the writers didn't slip in a few lines of dialogue to turn her height and fleshiness to a sexy, comic advantage. Couldn't her boyfriend have contrasted her with her petite-little-nothing schoolmates? The movie never acknowledges that she looks different from the other girls, and so we're acutely aware of it. (Turner is really good only when the joke is that Peggy Sue is much too experienced to put up with the behavior expected of her as a teen-ager.) Nicolas Cage isn't a facile actor; he works to get into his character, and he brings something touching and desperate to Charlie the small-town hotshot. But, matched with Turner's Peggy Sue, the rawboned Charlie is uncouth and callow, and his voice is funny, as if Daffy Duck had crawled into his mouth and got his teeth jammed up….”

Pauline Kael
The New Yorker, October 20, 1986
Hooked, p 220