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Miss Potter
The Weinstein Company / MGM


7.1

based on 29 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

based on 39 votes
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FILM:

Babe

MPAA RATING: PG for brief mild language

Starring Renée Zellweger, Ewan McGregor, Emily Watson, Barbara Flynn, and Bill Paterson

An exploration of the life of Beatrix Potter, the author of "The Tale of Peter Rabbit," the beloved and best-selling children's classic. The film tells the story of Potter's (Zellweger) love for her publisher Norman Wayne (McGregor) and her strong attempt for an independent life during a time when society expected woman of her class simply to make a good marriage. (The Weinstein Company)

GENRE(S):	Drama
WRITTEN BY:	Richard Maltby Jr.
DIRECTED BY:	Chris Noonan
RELEASE DATE:	DVD: June 19, 2007 Theatrical: December 29, 2006
RUNNING TIME:	92 minutes, Color
ORIGIN:	UK / USA

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

100

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

In every way, Miss Potter is a very beautiful thing.

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

It's first-class entertainment for bookish lads and lasses of all ages - and for those who never have or never will crack a paperback's spine. And it might inspire today's nascent artists to open up their sketch-pads as well as their hearts and minds.

Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer

In addition to being a beloved author and illustrator, Beatrix is also presented as an early feminist and environmentalist who took control of her literary empire and saved vast acres of luscious farmland from greedy developers, eventually bequeathing property to Britain's National Trust.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

In many ways, a magical little movie in its own right, and a thoroughly pleasant experience.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

With its lack of pretensions, Miss Potter is that rare breed of cinematic animal: a movie whose entire goal is to entertain and perhaps apply a gentle touch to the heart.

USA Today Claudia Puig

It is a lovely film for the holiday season, as well as afterward, and is reminiscent of "Finding Neverland," without the darker undercurrents.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

Miss Potter, right to the end, is the definition of a "nice" movie, and that makes it a genuine oddball in a universe of increasingly distressed and uncivilized pop culture.

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

A very gentle-spirited picture, but it's not a self-consciously precious one.

Time Richard Corliss/Richard Schickel

The director, Chris Noonan, doesn't play to our sentiments, he just lets them naturally evolve--even the animation of a few of her (Potter's) drawings doesn't feel especially forced. The result is an honorable and curiously winning film.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

Endearing without being especially engaging.

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

Maybe Miss Potter will be best appreciated on video when you will intuitively know when to turn it off. On the other hand, Potter's pastel illustrations, which often come to life to her and to the camera's eye, deserve the larger canvas. Tough call.

Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey

At 92 minutes, the film has the economy of a Potter story, but not the shapeliness or the zip.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen

With its tasteful palette and twee charm, Miss Potter is the china plate of movies, a Peter Rabbit collectible entirely suitable for mounting on the nursery wall.

Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips

A scenic, well-behaved account of Potter's life and times.

New York Magazine David Edelstein

Miss Potter hardly deserves ridicule. It's sweet with lovely Lake District vistas and a heartfelt endorsement of land conservation. It will certainly play well with older audiences and the kind of adolescent girls who draw faces in their O's.

Empire Angie Errigo

Pitched awkwardly -- neither for children nor cool young adults -- it's very sweet, very nice and just the thing for a girlie matinée with mum and nan.

The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt

The problem confronting writer Richard Maltby Jr. and director Chris Noonan is that Potter lived a fairly uneventful life once you remove her success as an author.

Variety Robert Koehler

Renee Zellweger, in another Blighty role, struggles to make Beatrix credible.

Village Voice Ella Taylor

By most accounts, Potter was a serious workaholic monomaniacally devoted to the purity of her vision. Undaunted, Noonan and Maltby are determined to squeeze her life into a run-of-the-mill romance in which love heals all wounds.

Los Angeles Times Carina Chocano

The movie is at once a flagrant piece of kitsch and an unexpectedly affecting story about an individual overcoming personal tragedy and brutally restrictive circumstances by talent and force of will.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Nathan Rabin

"Potter" periodically brings Zellweger's charming drawings to life in elegantly animated sequences that are as delightful and lyrical as the rest of the film is stilted and clumsy.

Boston Globe Ty Burr

The immediate problem with making a movie based on Potter's life is that it doesn't seem to have been very interesting.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

This attractive, superficial stab at biography, with Renée Zellweger in the title role, is more concerned with a lonely woman's quest for acceptance and love than with an author's worldly achievements.

The New York Times Stephen Holden

This much sweetness and light in a movie is all very well. But there's a reason that recipes for cake and cookies call for a pinch of salt. In Miss Potter, there is only a grain or two -- not enough to dilute the sugary overload. The film is the cinematic equivalent of a delicate English tea cake whose substance is buried under too many layers of icing.

Chicago Reader J.R. Jones

The twee romance was too much for me, though the movie's first half follows in fascinating detail the innovations Warne introduced to popularize illustrated picture books for children.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

Zellweger is certainly likable as Beatrix, but as an upper-class English lady of a century ago, she enunciates her words as if sucking a lemon -- you almost start to wonder if you've stumbled into a satire of "Masterpiece Theatre."

New York Post Lou Lumenick

Zellweger dusts off her Bridget Jones accent - and a constellation of annoying vocal and facial tics - for Miss Potter, an unrelentingly mediocre, TV-movieish biopic of beloved children's author Beatrix Potter.

Austin Chronicle Josh Rosenblatt

Miss Potter is, in the end, a confection, a trip through the imagination on gossamer wings. Enchanting, perhaps, but a long, long way from meaningful.

The New Yorker Anthony Lane

Miss Potter is a grave disappointment, because it never listens out for that note. It is a soft, woolly film about a smart, unsentimental woman who did constant battle with her frustrations.

The average user rating for this movie is 7.1 (out of 10) based on 39 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Grace B. gave it a7:
I enjoyed Miss Potter on the whole. it was nice to see an optimistic point of view in the face of adversity. it's one of those feel good movies that you won't forget about the second it's over. I'd recommend seeing it.

Mark K. gave it an8:
A nice, quiet film. Very British and a delight. I don't know why it was rated PG -- it could have been G. (It is kid-safe.) Enjoyable.

Evelyn D. gave it a5:
This was a nice little movie, but nothing about it made it stand out. It was average.

Katherine gave it a3:
Ok. Renée Zellweger killed the movie for me. Why did they have to get her, a terrible ugly actress, to fake a British accent? Why couldn't they have gotten a good British actress to play a british author? I love Beatrix Potter's work, and Renée Zellweger is just making her look horrible.

Keith gave it a6:
Pleasant and unremarkable. Zellweger shows great pluck, and Emily Watson blows wonderful, fresh air into the movie during her too few scenes. For the most part, the movie doesn't make any real attempt to dig very deep into the person of Potter. I would have probably given the movie a 7, but I found the animation sequences too cornball even for a movie about a woman who drew bunnies and ducks. A good movie for those that like their biopics entirely not offensive or insightful, but there are no egregious missteps, other than a lack of any real character excavation.

Robert I. gave it a7:
Entertaining in the Hollywood manner, in which lake vistas all hold poignant meaning, crescent townhouses hide pretentious, overbearing mothers, and young girls never dream of happiness as self-reliant individuals. Somehow sugar has been substituted for the pinch of salt that underpins all Beatrix Potter's real work.

Chad S. gave it a7:
After a crucial plot point relatively late in "Miss Potter", the narrative starts to slacken, because frankly, other than her depression(which the film gives short shrift to), nothing truly remarkable happens in Beatrix Potter's life after her initial rush of fame. This film makes the mistake of covering too much time. "Miss Potter" is at its best when the famed writer of "Peter Rabbit" sits at her drafting table, and like a proto-Tori Amos, treats the imaginary realm as if it were an extension of the physical world. Because of the times, much prejudice and ridicule were levelled against any girl who aspired to be more than a wife and mother, especially when her weapon of transcendence was thought to be a man's domain. "Miss Potter" largely doesn't mess up the excitement behind the feminist gambit that a woman can do anything she sets her mind to. If Potter was a murder-mystery writer, life would've imitated art; every character in the film benefits from the catastrophic blow that befalls the writer's personal and professional life. But Potter wrote children's books, and the film deals with her sadness in a very unrigorous manner.

Miss Potter The Weinstein Company / MGM

Miss Potter
The Weinstein Company / MGM