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The Iron Lady
Metascore
54 out of 100

Mixed or average reviews - based on 41 Critics

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 17 out of 41
  2. Mixed: 21 out of 41
  3. Negative: 3 out of 41
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  1. Charlotte Observer
    Reviewed by: Roger Moore
    Jan 12, 2012
    88
    Lloyd finesses a deft script of brisk, quick strokes by Abi Morgan ("Brick Lane," "Shame") into a terrific entertainment.
  2. New York Post
    Reviewed by: Kyle Smith
    Dec 30, 2011
    88
    Sincerely directed by one woman (Phyllida Lloyd, who did "Mamma Mia!") and smartly written by another (Abi Morgan), the film stars an unsurpassable Meryl Streep, whose ability to empathize with her characters has never been more gloriously impassioned than it is in this titanic performance.
  3. Rolling Stone
    Reviewed by: Peter Travers
    Dec 29, 2011
    88
    The sharp economy of Lloyd's direction allows the incontestably great Streep to take impressionistic snatches of a life and build a woman in full. This is acting of the highest order.
  4. San Francisco Chronicle
    Reviewed by: Mick LaSalle
    Jan 12, 2012
    75
    Imagine a biopic about Ronald Reagan that leaves out Gorbachev but instead dramatizes his years with Alzheimer's, and you'll get an idea of this film's misplaced focus.
  5. St. Louis Post-Dispatch
    Reviewed by: Calvin Wilson
    Jan 12, 2012
    75
    As biopics go, The Iron Lady is among the more intriguing ones.
  6. Philadelphia Inquirer
    Reviewed by: Steven Rea
    Jan 12, 2012
    75
    Yea or nay, love or hate, the portrait that Streep delivers in Phyllida Lloyd's impressionistic biopic is astonishing.
  7. Chicago Tribune
    Reviewed by: Michael Phillips
    Jan 12, 2012
    75
    Meryl Streep excels as Margaret Thatcher. And the movie itself does not work.
  8. Entertainment Weekly
    Reviewed by: Lisa Schwarzbaum
    Dec 21, 2011
    75
    Streep is a pleasure to behold; less so the rest of The Iron Lady.
  9. Chicago Reader
    Reviewed by: J.R. Jones
    Jan 12, 2012
    70
    This conceit works precisely because Thatcher's popular appeal was so deeply rooted in nostalgia for the days of empire, and Streep, no fan of Thatcher, nicely undercuts the poignancy of her current condition with flashbacks that reveal her brittle arrogance in office.
  10. Salon.com
    Reviewed by: Andrew O'Hehir
    Dec 29, 2011
    70
    Maggie Thatcher contains multitudes; she is rife with contradictions you can barely glimpse in this modestly affecting movie.
  11. New York Magazine (Vulture)
    Reviewed by: David Edelstein
    Dec 29, 2011
    70
    Shallow but satisfying, largely because of Meryl Streep and her big fake English teeth and gift for using mimicry as a means of achieving empathy.
  12. Time
    Reviewed by: Richard Corliss
    Dec 29, 2011
    70
    The Iron Lady is a clever and oddly touching entertainment.
  13. The Hollywood Reporter
    Reviewed by: David Rooney
    Nov 27, 2011
    70
    Meryl Streep gives a fully realized portrait of British Prime Minister Thatcher in a biopic that values character over context.
  14. Portland Oregonian
    Reviewed by: Shawn Levy
    Jan 12, 2012
    67
    Anyone looking for a full-bodied account of the woman, her deeds, and her place in history shouldn't be encouraged to linger too long with The Iron Lady.
  15. Miami Herald
    Reviewed by: Connie Ogle
    Jan 12, 2012
    63
    The Iron Lady never delves deeply enough into the politics or the people, preferring instead to make us feel bad about the unfortunate way in which old age levels us all.
  16. USA Today
    Reviewed by: Claudia Puig
    Dec 29, 2011
    63
    It's hard to rationalize the vision of this dotty elderly woman with the tough-minded politician. The story lacks insight, glosses over key political issues and is unworthy of Streep's masterful performance.
  17. Slant Magazine
    Reviewed by: R. Kurt Osenlund
    Dec 13, 2011
    63
    The wonder and terror of Meryl Streep's performance in The Iron Lady is her formidable ability to nail the disheartening talents of not just Margaret Thatcher, but so many conservative politicians like her, who have a tremendous knack for changing minds and beckoning cheers while underlining their own rigid ignorance.
  18. Arizona Republic
    Reviewed by: Bill Goodykoontz
    Jan 12, 2012
    60
    A curious misfire, a stylized biography of one of the most powerful women in politics, portrayed by the greatest actress of our time, that asks more questions than it answers.
  19. Empire
    Reviewed by: Dan Jolin
    Jan 3, 2012
    60
    One of Streep's finest-ever performances. But beyond that - whatever Morgan and Lloyd's intentions - it's little more than a myth-enshrining exercise.
  20. Los Angeles Times
    Reviewed by: Betsy Sharkey
    Dec 29, 2011
    60
    The film catches her long after she's left the public eye, and rather than an examination, or an assessment, of her politics, it instead offers up an affecting if not always satisfying portrait of the strong-willed leader humbled by age.
  21. Tampa Bay Times
    Reviewed by: Steve Persall
    Jan 11, 2012
    58
    There's no disputing Streep's brilliance, which this time feels more calculated than usual, in a movie demanding only an impersonation.
  22. Christian Science Monitor
    Reviewed by: Peter Rainer
    Dec 30, 2011
    58
    The Iron Lady is too bland to be controversial, too antiquated to speak to the present.
  23. The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
    Reviewed by: Liam Lacey
    Jan 12, 2012
    50
    The Iron Lady is a performance in search of a film.
  24. Washington Post
    Reviewed by: Ann Hornaday
    Jan 12, 2012
    50
    Can a performance be too good? Meryl Streep disappears so uncannily into former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady that her performance overpowers the movie it's in - a perfectly executed triple axel that renders everything else just featureless ice.
  25. Boston Globe
    Reviewed by: Wesley Morris
    Jan 12, 2012
    50
    It's a parade float atop which Streep can pose and impose. Sometimes her showmanship amounts to shamelessness. She wants us to watch her sack another part.
  26. Austin Chronicle
    Reviewed by: Kimberley Jones
    Jan 11, 2012
    50
    If I may presume: Thatcher probably would have preferred more action, less talk.
  27. Chicago Sun-Times
    Reviewed by: Roger Ebert
    Jan 11, 2012
    50
    You have to be very talented to work with Meryl Streep. It also helps to know how to use her. The Iron Lady fails in both of these categories.
  28. ReelViews
    Reviewed by: James Berardinelli
    Jan 4, 2012
    50
    The most disappointing aspect of The Iron Lady is that some of the most memorable hallmarks of Thatcher's time in power are glossed over.
  29. Village Voice
    Reviewed by: Karina Longworth
    Dec 27, 2011
    50
    Despite the story's conceit of placing the viewer inside Thatcher's head, she never feels like a real person - but this is more the fault of Morgan's script than Streep's typically studied performance, much of it buried under prosthetics.
  30. The New Yorker
    Reviewed by: David Denby
    Dec 27, 2011
    50
    This bio-pic, written by Abi Morgan and directed by Phyllida Lloyd, is an oddly unsettled compound of glorification and malice. It whirts around restlessly and winds up nowhere. [2 Jan. 2012, p.78]
    All this critic's reviews
  31. Boxoffice Magazine
    Reviewed by: Kate Erbland
    Dec 26, 2011
    50
    Where the actress succeeds, all but disappearing into the role of Thatcher, the rest of the film is a bizarre amalgamation of archival footage, half-baked montages, hallucinations that push the bounds of poetic license straight into the gray area of bad taste, and plain old tedium.
  32. New York Observer
    Reviewed by: Rex Reed
    Dec 20, 2011
    50
    Let it be said that Ms. Streep is galvanizing, even as the film slogs through too much information and not nearly enough illumination.
  33. Variety
    Reviewed by: Leslie Felperin
    Nov 27, 2011
    50
    Fuzzy-headed biopic, which glosses over the former British prime minister's politics in favor of a glib, breakneck whirl around her career and marriage.
  34. Movieline
    Reviewed by: Stephanie Zacharek
    Dec 29, 2011
    45
    Some of us wonder, still, how Margaret Thatcher can continue to live with herself. Watching Meryl Streep walk around so ably in Thatcher's skin isn't enlightening; it's more like a living nightmare.
  35. The A.V. Club
    Reviewed by: Tasha Robinson
    Dec 29, 2011
    42
    Strangely, this Thatcher biopic might have been far more worthwhile if it wasn't about Thatcher: The aged, dotty stranger hanging out with her dead husband is a more compelling subject.
  36. New York Daily News
    Reviewed by: Elizabeth Weitzman
    Dec 29, 2011
    40
    While The Iron Lady fails as a biography, it succeeds incontestably as a showcase. Streep captures Thatcher's voice and mannerisms and then pushes further, creating a three-dimensional character rather than simply offering a technically deft impression.
  37. The New York Times
    Reviewed by: A.O. Scott
    Dec 29, 2011
    40
    You are left with the impression of an old woman who can't quite remember who she used to be and of a movie that is not so sure either.
  38. Time Out New York
    Reviewed by: Keith Uhlich
    Dec 20, 2011
    40
    This iron lady of cinema deserves better.
  39. NPR
    Reviewed by: Jeannette Catsoulis
    Dec 30, 2011
    35
    Whichever side of the aisle you inhabit, you will leave The Iron Lady feeling disgusted; you will also feel cheated - of information, insight or even an identifiable point of view.
  40. Wall Street Journal
    Reviewed by: Joe Morgenstern
    Dec 29, 2011
    30
    Meryl Streep as Margaret Thatcher is the main reason to see The Iron Lady, which was directed by Phyllida Lloyd - not just the main reason but the raison d'κtre of an otherwise misconceived movie.
  41. Slate
    Reviewed by: Dana Stevens
    Dec 29, 2011
    30
    The Iron Lady is, to put it kindly, a shambles.
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User Reviews

All reviews »
User Score
6.2 out of 10

Generally favorable reviews- based on 118 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 32 out of 57
  2. Mixed: 14 out of 57
  3. Negative: 11 out of 57
  1. eastplanoman
    10
    I wish the critics would restrict their comments to the movie and not Margret Thacher. We should be rating the move not her politics! Grade the movie and it's actors not the politics of the time.Please restrict your opinions to the movies not the politics of the time. It really makes you look stupid..… Full Review »
  2. CitizenCharlie
    5
    The first major Hollywood effort to document Margaret Thatcher’s life made a strategic error. Instead of focusing on the Iron Lady kicking butt in the 1980s in the extremely male dominated arena of global politics, The Iron lady chose to focus on Margaret’s mid-stage dementia with haphazard flashbacks to the major themes throughout her life. Casting the world’s greatest living actress, Meryl Streep, was a very wise decision but even she cannot make up for the dreadful script which spotlights the wrong era in the Prime Minister’s long and eventful life. Margaret Thatcher was Great Britain’s first female Prime Minister when she entered 10 Downing St. in 1979. Her beginning as a grocer’s daughter, a rare female parliamentarian, and finally Conservative Party leader are briefly examined in the film, but only superficially. Instead, an older Thatcher putters around her apartment conversing with her dead husband, Dennis (Jim Broadbent), and making statements which sound like she still considers herself Prime Minister. Think of a Ronald Reagan biopic; do you want to see Reagan as Governor, running for President, and meeting with Gorbachev or do you want to see Reagan in full blown dementia trying to remember his name? Meryl Streep is a very convincing Margaret Thatcher. It makes quite a statement that an American actress was chosen over a native Brit but perhaps that is because the director, Phyllida Lloyd, also directed Streep in Mamma Mia. She plays a younger Margaret just as well as she plays stooped over and shuffling Margaret. For the audience; however, the film is just so much more intriguing to watch young Margaret develop her ideas about helping yourself vs. help from the government and responding appropriately to terrorism (IRA), etc…. Politically, there are quite a few parallels to current issues from Margaret’s 1980s platform of government austerity measures, deficit spending, and combating unemployment. Unfortunately, these policy vignettes are egregiously glossed over to hurry up and get back to another senile Margaret episode. The Iron Lady takes advantage of various ways to emphasize the oddity of a female rising so high within the British government. There are a few montages where the zoomed-in camera pans across a line of dark suits and then abruptly stops when it hits an almost neon blue blouse and skirt. On Margaret’s first day in Parliament there is a very similar shot panning across uniformly black dress shoes until it halts on a pair of black and white heels. Margaret gets a few monologues in Parliament as she spars contentiously with opposition leaders and holds her own. Her best speech is in response to the Falkland Islands War and Britain’s decisive victory over Argentina. The 1982 war gets a few more minutes of screen time than her other major political moments, but it still feels rushed and choppy because by now the audience realizes the film does not want to be in the past, but wants to stay with Margaret in the present. What a shame that Meryl Streep’s fascinating performance is wasted on such a lackluster script and meandering film. While I do not recommend The Iron Lady, I do not argue harshly against it exclusively due to Streep’s virtuoso performance. I recognize this film for what it is; a wasted opportunity to profile an interesting world leader who attracted the acting talent she warranted, but not the story.… Full Review »
  3. allmovies
    6
    The Iron Lady is a surprising and intimate portrait of Margaret Thatcher (Meryl Streep), the first and only female Prime Minister of The United Kingdom. One of the 20th century's most famous and influential women, Thatcher came from nowhere to smash through barriers of gender and class to be heard in a male dominated world.… Full Review »
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