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Miss Potter
EMAILPRINTThe Weinstein Company / MGM

Mixed or average reviews
Based on 29 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 40 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie >
Movie Info
Genre(s): Drama
Written by: Richard Maltby Jr.
Directed by: Chris Noonan
Release Date:
Theatrical: December 29, 2006
DVD: June 19, 2007
Running Time: 92 minutes, Color
Origin: UK / USA
Summary
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)
Also On Metacritic
FILM: Babe
Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database View The Trailer Official Studio Site
What The Critics Said
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...
San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle
In every way, Miss Potter is a very beautiful thing.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold
In many ways, a magical little movie in its own right, and a thoroughly pleasant experience.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek
A very gentle-spirited picture, but it's not a self-consciously precious one.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey
At 92 minutes, the film has the economy of a Potter story, but not the shapeliness or the zip.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips
A scenic, well-behaved account of Potter's life and times.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >Variety Robert Koehler
Renee Zellweger, in another Blighty role, struggles to make Beatrix credible.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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."
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 7.1 (out of 10) based on 40 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Phyllis L. gave it a10:
This was a very delightful movie!!! Very refreshing after the usual horrific, violent,blood & guts movies Hollywood likes to put out. It was interesting and entertaining as well as educational!
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.
