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Iris
Metascore
76 out of 100

Generally favorable reviews - based on 30 Critics

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 25 out of 30
  2. Mixed: 5 out of 30
  3. Negative: 0 out of 30
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  1. Miami Herald
    Reviewed by: Connie Ogle
    100
    First and foremost, Iris is a magnificent story about the enduring bond between two eccentric, astounding souls who somehow managed to find each other and hold on for dear life.
  2. San Francisco Chronicle
    Reviewed by: Edward Guthmann
    100
    Splendid.
  3. Rolling Stone
    Reviewed by: Peter Travers
    100
    Director Richard Eyre has struck gold. Twice. Dench and Winslet are a riveting matchup.
  4. Los Angeles Times
    Reviewed by: Kenneth Turan
    90
    Intelligent, poignant film.
  5. Washington Post
    Reviewed by: Desson Thomson
    90
    A saga of unbearable sadness and romantic beauty.
  6. Washington Post
    Reviewed by: Ann Hornaday
    90
    Not just a fitting document of a life brilliantly lived but a vibrant, almost palpitating piece of cinema.
  7. USA Today
    Reviewed by: Claudia Puig
    88
    Despite the sad denouement, it's still the love story of the year.
  8. ReelViews
    Reviewed by: James Berardinelli
    88
    It's a powerful, affecting tale that uses scenes of the young couple's new love as a counterpoint to Iris' final days - memories of a brightest spring echoing in the darkest depths of winter.
  9. Baltimore Sun
    Reviewed by: Michael Sragow
    88
    The union of thought and feeling becomes flesh and blood thanks to four brilliant performers in Iris.
  10. Seattle Post-Intelligencer
    Reviewed by: Paula Nechak
    83
    The film is so crisply acted and smartly drawn that you barely notice the cracks in the veneer.
  11. Salon.com
    Reviewed by: Charles Taylor
    80
    Suffers from PBS syndrome, but Dame Judi Dench cures with a moving portrayal of life with Alzheimer's.
  12. L.A. Weekly
    Reviewed by: Ella Taylor
    80
    The film is not a biopic or a portrait of a famous marriage so much as it is an imaginative essay on what made a union between two radically different people work as well as it did.
  13. New Times (L.A.)
    Reviewed by: Andy Klein
    80
    Dench is wholly extraordinary in a characterization that is frequently muted, literally and necessarily.
  14. Austin Chronicle
    Reviewed by: Steve Davis
    78
    Iris is difficult to watch, given that it requires you to witness the transformation of the title character from a literate, vibrant woman to the ghost of her former self.
  15. Chicago Tribune
    Reviewed by: Michael Wilmington
    75
    It's good, but not great -- despite the heights to which Dench and Broadbent drive it. But those heights are lofty, the pain still stings.
  16. Christian Science Monitor
    Reviewed by: David Sterritt
    75
    Dench and Winslet give strong and creative performances, and Broadbent is positively brilliant as old Bayley.
  17. New York Daily News
    Reviewed by: Jami Bernard
    75
    A delicately upbeat, even humorous celebration of love and sacrifice.
    All this critic's reviews
  18. New York Post
    Reviewed by: Lou Lumenick
    75
    Though Iris is extremely well-acted and beautifully photographed, some audience members may find themselves agreeing with Bayley's frustrated complaint: "I've never known who you are."
  19. Philadelphia Inquirer
    Reviewed by: Carrie Rickey
    75
    A story with a beginning and end but without a middle. Two slices of bread without the sandwich meat, I wrote in my notes.
  20. Entertainment Weekly
    Reviewed by: Lisa Schwarzbaum
    75
    The movie's most artful feature is the fluidity with which the past slides into the present, echoing Murdoch's own unmoored sentience, so that the younger self, played with dash and vigor by Kate Winslet, turns into the old woman lost in her own home.
  21. Portland Oregonian
    Reviewed by: Shawn Levy
    75
    It may not be a great movie, but the acting in it is amazing.
  22. TV Guide
    Reviewed by: Ken Fox
    70
    It's a great achievement, quiet enough to allow room for her excellent supporting cast -- but strong enough to be felt over James Horner's omnipresent, typically overbearing score.
  23. New York Magazine (Vulture)
    Reviewed by: Peter Rainer
    70
    By continually interrupting the sequences of the adult couple with scenes of the young pair, Eyre shatters the emotional power of Dench and Broadbent.
  24. Variety
    Reviewed by: Derek Elley
    70
    A triumph on the casting side but less so dramatically, Richard Eyre's Iris fails to do full justice to its subject.
  25. Wall Street Journal
    Reviewed by: Joe Morgenstern
    70
    I regretted it most when the temporal hopscotching took me away from Ms. Winslet's portrait of the writer as a young sensualist, madly smitten by words and life.
    All this critic's reviews
  26. Village Voice
    Reviewed by: Joy Press
    60
    Some critics wondered if "Elegy for Iris" was an act of revenge or reverence. The film, like the book, leaves behind a sad and sour image: of an indomitable woman gradually infantilized by glitches in her brain chemistry, and the man who finally is allowed to take custody of her.
  27. Chicago Reader
    Reviewed by: Lisa Alspector
    60
    Even though I appreciate this movie's craft, I wish I hadn't seen it. It's a heady, progressive -- or perhaps elaborately conservative? -- romance, but it's also a tale of terrible suffering.
  28. Chicago Sun-Times
    Reviewed by: Roger Ebert
    50
    Because the film is well-acted and written with intelligence, it might be worth seeing, despite my objections. I suspect my own feelings.
  29. Film Threat
    Reviewed by: Michael Dequina
    50
    A glacially-paced disease-of-the-week movie blown up to big screen size.
  30. The New York Times
    Reviewed by: A.O. Scott
    50
    Rarely does a movie feel as leaden-footed as Iris, especially when it tries to bounce back and forth. The audience is transported between two very obvious stories and becomes slightly irritated by the grinding inevitability of both of them. As a result, Iris Murdoch gets lost in the shuffle.
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