The Waiting Room
The Waiting Room Image
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Metascore
84 out of 100

Universal acclaim - based on 12 Critics What's this?

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  • Summary: The Waiting Room uses unprecedented access to go behind the doors of Oakland’s Highland Hospital, a safety-net hospital fighting for survival while weathering the storm of a persistent economic downturn. Stretched to the breaking point, Highland is the primary care facility for 250,000 patieients of nearly every nationality, race, and religion, with 250 patients – most of them uninsured – crowding its emergency room every day. Using a blend of cinema verité and characters’ voiceover, the film offers a raw, intimate, and often uplifting look at how patients, staff and caregivers cope with disease, bureaucracy, frustration, hope and hard choices during one typically hectic day. (International Film Circuit)… Expand

Critic Reviews

Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 11 out of 12
  2. Mixed: 1 out of 12
  3. Negative: 0 out of 12
  1. Washington Post
    Reviewed by: Ann Hornaday
    Nov 30, 2012
    100
    With grace, discretion and supreme tact, Nicks sweeps viewers to a climactic montage that wordlessly honors the best ways we care for one another. The Waiting Room bears poetic witness to an overlooked fact: America's health care system may be broken, but its people are anything but.
  2. Salon.com
    Reviewed by: Andrew O'Hehir
    Sep 28, 2012
    80
    The Waiting Room is a source of both inspiration and hope. The system may be broken, but the people are not.
  3. The Hollywood Reporter
    Reviewed by: John DeFore
    Sep 30, 2012
    80
    Inherently unpreachy but making its point more effectively than many participants in the debate can, the film should find vocal advocates in a niche theatrical run.
  4. Time Out New York
    Reviewed by: Keith Uhlich
    Sep 25, 2012
    60
    The documentary's scope feels a bit small overall - more concerned with capturing the episodic adventures of these disparate subjects than with connecting their experiences to larger societal ills.

See all 12 Critic Reviews

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Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 1 out of 1
  2. Mixed: 0 out of 1
  3. Negative: 0 out of 1
  1. TVJerry
    6
    Just when I finished reading the 30+ page TIME article about our broken medical system, I go see this movie. It's a very verite look at a public hospital's ER department. People spend hours, even days, waiting for medical help (more like a free clinic that an ER). Most of them don't have insurance and many don't have jobs. Meanwhile, the staff patiently and empathetically tries to deal with the backlog. While only 2 stories are followed in detail, there are glimpses of many more…and this is one of the film's flaws. It shows a mass of problems without solutions, preaching or emotional investment. It effectively spotlights the issue, but doesn't make for especially moving cinema.… Expand

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