Nebraska
Paramount Pictures | Release Date: November 15, 2013 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
86
METASCORE
Universal acclaim based on 46 Critic Reviews
Positive:
44
Mixed:
2
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
Tampa Bay TimesSteve PersallDec 11, 2013
Not much happens to Woody in Payne's movie, compared to modern penchants for rushed narratives and easily defined characters. Yet patience pays off, with a suitably minor triumph for such an unassuming man. And a major acting triumph for Dern. Read full review
100
Washington PostAnn HornadayDec 10, 2013
Only someone with intimate knowledge of the Midwest’s singular cadences, social codes and confounding emotional stew (er, covered hot dish) of aggression and politesse could pull off something as masterful, meaningful and poetic as Nebraska. Read full review
100
EmpireDamon WiseDec 2, 2013
A charming road movie that develops into a full-blown study of life and roots, offering a beautiful insight into the way families migrate and change. Read full review
100
Philadelphia InquirerSteven ReaNov 22, 2013
Nebraska is not a breakneck, screwball farce - although it has its moments, like the comical heist of an air compressor from a farmer's barn. Payne's film is loping. It's deadpan, poignant, absurd. Read full review
100
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Liam LaceyNov 21, 2013
Mostly, Nebraska impresses for its sure rhythms and artful balance of comedy and melancholy, resulting in Payne’s most satisfying film since "About Schmidt." Read full review
100
Chicago Sun-TimesRichard RoeperNov 21, 2013
Shot in beautiful tones of black and white (and silver and gray), Nebraska is steeped in nostalgia, regret and bittersweet moments. Yet it’s also a pitch-perfect cinematic poem about the times we live in. Read full review
100
Los Angeles TimesKenneth TuranNov 14, 2013
Nebraska offers something deeper and more mature, the ability to make us care about its characters and their story on a different level than Payne has given us before. Read full review
100
SlateDana StevensNov 14, 2013
I’ve always admired this director’s commitment to both seriousness and laughter, to showing the beauty and significance of ordinary human life side by side with its petty, venal absurdity. Read full review
100
USA TodayClaudia PuigNov 14, 2013
Bruce Dern gives the performance of his career as the headstrong Woody in the brilliant, wisely observed and wryly funny Nebraska. What stands out is the fullness of the character, with mannerisms and expressions that make him wholly dimensional. Read full review
100
Wall Street JournalJoe MorgensternNov 14, 2013
What's extraordinary is what happens at the intersection of Mr. Payne's impeccable direction and Mr. Nelson's brilliant script. The odyssey combines, quite effortlessly, prickly combat between father and son. Read full review
100
McClatchy-Tribune News ServiceRoger MooreNov 12, 2013
And Dern, a great character actor who made his mark opposite everyone from Redford and John Wayne to Jane Fonda, embraces the roll of a lifetime. Read full review
100
VarietyScott FoundasMay 23, 2013
Throughout, Payne gently infuses the film’s comic tone with strains of longing and regret, always careful to avoid the maudlin or cheaply sentimental. Read full review
95
NPRBob MondelloNov 15, 2013
The filmmaker has crammed Nebraska with orneriness, humor, greed, Americana and performances so natural they seem like found objects — especially Dern's, which caps a career of character parts with a delicately nuanced character. Read full review
90
SalonAndrew O'HehirNov 14, 2013
It’s a career-capping performance by Dern, who is so convincing as an addled, drunken, embittered and probably dying man that he doesn’t appear to be acting, but Forte is just as good playing a preoccupied, emotionally constricted man-child. Read full review
90
The New York TimesA.O. ScottNov 14, 2013
This is a comedy, with plenty of acutely funny lines, a handful of sharp sight gags and a few minutes of pure, perfect madcap. But a grim, unmistakable shadow falls across its wintry landscape. Read full review
90
The DissolveScott TobiasNov 13, 2013
Nebraska is one of Payne’s best films, a near-perfect amalgam of the acrid humor, great local color, and stirring resonances that run through his work. Read full review
90
Village VoiceAmy NicholsonNov 12, 2013
Nebraska is the antidote to other family charmers about goofballs in matching sweaters. Read full review
90
New York Magazine (Vulture)David EdelsteinNov 11, 2013
The movie is a triumph of an especially satisfying kind. It arrives at a kind of gnarled grace that’s true to this sorry old man and the family he let down in so many ways. Read full review
88
St. Louis Post-DispatchJoe WilliamsNov 27, 2013
A co-star deserving special mention is Nebraska itself, which Payne films in black-and-white to mirror the austerity of life on the de-populated prairie. These corners of the Cornhusker State are as empty as the promise of a sweepstakes prize. In this land of ghosts, one old pioneer tries to grab his stake before he becomes another windblown husk. Read full review
88
Miami HeraldRene RodriguezNov 27, 2013
The movie has a longing melancholy that leavens the humor — it’s a surprisingly sad, gentle comedy. Read full review
88
Boston GlobeTy BurrNov 27, 2013
It’s a movie that floods you with emotion when you least expect it. Read full review
88
ReelViewsJames BerardinelliNov 27, 2013
Nebraska is a rambling affair. It's about characters and dialogue. There's not much of a narrative to speak of - this is even more minimalist than "About Schmidt" or "Sideways." Read full review
88
RogerEbert.comChristy LemireNov 15, 2013
Nebraska is full of complicated people marked by flaws and failures, mistakes and regrets; they can be selfish bastards, too. It often feels as though Payne is trying to strip away the cliché that the region is populated exclusively by hardworking, decent hearted types. Read full review
88
Rolling StonePeter TraversNov 15, 2013
Just try to take your eyes off Dern. In his finest two hours onscreen, he gives a performance worth cheering. There's not an ounce of bullshit in it. Same goes for the movie. Read full review
88
ObserverRex ReedNov 12, 2013
The movie is wrenchingly slow — you know from the start that nothing is ever going to happen — but Nebraska has a charm that grows on you like a lichen, a wicked sense of humor that makes you laugh in spite of yourself, a concealed heart soft as a Hostess Twinkie, and a generous, welcome respect for the basic decency of the human race, more valuable than any lottery ticket. Read full review
83
Portland OregonianMarc MohanNov 25, 2013
Even the tiny roles in this Rockwell-meets-Breughel panorama are perfectly, although almost cruelly, cast. Read full review
83
Entertainment WeeklyChris NashawatyNov 13, 2013
Nebraska isn't a perfect movie. It's often hard to tell whether Payne, an Omaha native, is paying heartfelt tribute to his vast stable of Cornhusker characters or slyly mocking them as simpleminded yokels. Read full review
80
Total FilmPhilip KempDec 9, 2013
A pitch-perfect performance from Dern graces Alexander Payne’s latest roadmovie – another bittersweet meditation on the sad, comic futility of life. Read full review
80
Arizona RepublicBill GoodykoontzNov 21, 2013
Nebraska is as cold and unforgiving as its setting, yet just as stunning. Read full review
80
New York Daily NewsJoe NeumaierNov 14, 2013
Capturing family on film — the real rhythms of family, with all the annoyances, awkwardness and affection — is tough. Tougher still is wrestling a story around the murky emotional waters of Midwestern relatives. Yet one needn’t be cut from that cloth to see the hilarious beauty, and the beautiful honesty, in Nebraska. Read full review
80
The TelegraphRobbie CollinMay 23, 2013
This is a resounding return to form for Payne: there are moments that recall his earlier road movies About Schmidt and Sideways, but it has a wistful, shuffling, grizzly-bearish rhythm all of its own. Read full review
80
The GuardianPeter BradshawMay 23, 2013
Nebraska may not be startlingly new, and sometimes we can see the epiphanies looming up over the distant horizon; the tone is, moreover, lighter and more lenient than in earlier pictures like Sideways. But it is always funny and smart. Read full review
80
Time Out LondonDave CalhounMay 23, 2013
More than ever Payne allows the humour to rise up gently from his story rather than burst through it. Read full review
80
The Hollywood ReporterTodd McCarthyMay 23, 2013
[A] wryly poignant and potent comic drama about the bereft state of things in America’s oft-vaunted heartland. Read full review
75
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleNov 21, 2013
An authentic piece of Americana. There's no lying or condescending from this director. Nebraska feels pure. Read full review
75
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsNov 21, 2013
Much of Nebraska is ordinary prose, but the best parts are plain-spoken comic poetry. Read full review
75
Christian Science MonitorPeter RainerNov 15, 2013
It’s a filmmaker’s conceit. These filmmakers may come from Nebraska, but, from the looks of things, they don’t want to be spending much time there. Read full review
75
New York PostLou LumenickNov 14, 2013
Bob Nelson’s original script, a sort of unlikely cross between “The Last Picture Show’’ and “The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek,’’ offers a biting satire of Midwestern life that Payne sometimes allows to border on condescension. Read full review
75
Slant MagazineR. Kurt OsenlundOct 10, 2013
In the film, Alexander Payne's overview of America is extraordinarily, multifariously profound. Read full review
70
The AtlanticJon FroschNov 9, 2022
It's far from the director's richest or most interesting work (that would be Sideways or About Schmidt), but the movie is a pleasure to watch: a melancholic comedy graced with the trademark Payne balance of tenderness and irony. Read full review
70
The New YorkerDavid DenbyNov 11, 2013
Bob Nelson wrote the script, which Payne has been mulling over for nine years, and some of it, enhanced by the deliberate pacing of his direction, is funny in a deadpan, black-comedy way. But the absurdist atmosphere feels thin: the movie is like a Beckett play without the metaphysical unease, the flickering blasphemies and revelations. Read full review
69
Film.comJordan HoffmanSep 2, 2013
There are some laughs – and a few moments worthy of tears – but there’s a breaking point of believability in here somewhere that keeps Nebraska merely good as opposed to great. Read full review
67
IndieWireEric KohnMay 23, 2013
It's a sad, thoughtful depiction of midwestern eccentrics regretting the past and growing bored of the present, ideas that Payne regards with gentle humor and pathos but also something of a shrug. Read full review
67
The PlaylistJessica KiangMay 23, 2013
Nebraska is a small-scale quixotic adventure about the importance of dreams, no matter how pie-eyed, in which the outlined flaws could all be forgiven, if it just went somewhere a bit more surprising. Read full review
60
Time OutDavid FearNov 12, 2013
If the overall effect of Nebraska’s father-son bonding and attention-must-be-paid pathos doesn’t quite have the zing of the filmmaker’s best work, he’s certainly got an ace in the hole. Read full review
58
The A.V. ClubA.A. Dowd Nov 13, 2013
Payne, who never met pathos he didn’t feel inclined to puncture with slapstick humor, has somehow made his best drama and his worst comedy rolled into one. Read full review
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