Ben Is Back
Roadside Attractions | Release Date: December 7, 2018 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
66
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 39 Critic Reviews
Positive:
28
Mixed:
11
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleDec 12, 2018
What makes Ben Is Back different is that, even if this kind of pain is completely outside your own experience, you’ll feel some of it watching this movie. Read full review
100
ObserverRex ReedDec 10, 2018
Another truthful, intelligently calibrated and fully committed performance by the remarkable Lucas Hedges following this year’s previously acclaimed "Boy Erased" rewards the sensitive, pulsating and intimate family drama Ben Is Back. Read full review
100
Film ThreatTiffany TchobanianDec 7, 2018
You will laugh, cry, and be left breathless by Hedges’ heart-pounding adventure and intimate portrait of family love. This film will hurt and capture your heart in the best way. It is without a doubt an unmissable cinematic achievement. Read full review
88
Movie NationRoger MooreDec 23, 2018
Through vivid, wrenching performances by Julia Roberts and Lucas Hedges, it personalizes the statistics, and personalizes the glib talk show therapists who counsel “Let them go, you can’t save them.” Not if it’s your kid. Read full review
88
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Johanna SchnellerDec 14, 2018
It’s an interesting twist on the usual addiction drama – it’s not the downfall, it’s will he stay clean? – and it works. If you’re not invested, you’re not watching. Read full review
88
Chicago Sun-TimesRichard RoeperDec 13, 2018
Ben Is Back shifts gears and becomes as much a thriller as a family drama, and some of the developments stretch credulity. Through it all, though, there’s the magnificence of Julia Roberts, and the fine performances from Hedges, Vance and the rest of the cast. They do great justice to this finely constructed slice of fractured family life. Read full review
83
The Film StageDan MeccaJan 9, 2019
There is a clarity to every performance from start to finish, from Roberts all the way down. Yes, the thriller elements that are introduced never fully connect with the tone of the overall experience, but it’s a minuscule criticism. Read full review
80
The New York TimesA.O. ScottDec 5, 2018
Ben Is Back is really Holly’s story, and notwithstanding the all-around excellence of the cast, it’s very much Roberts’s movie. This isn’t a matter of ego or showboating. On the contrary, what is so moving and effective about Roberts’s work here is her shrewd subversion of her long-established persona. Read full review
80
TheWrapSteve PondNov 19, 2018
In this time for movies about teens in trouble, it’s the mom in this one who packs the biggest punch. Read full review
80
Screen DailyWendy IdeSep 12, 2018
Julia Roberts blasts through this family reunion drama-turned-thriller with one of the most forceful performances of her career. Read full review
75
Philadelphia Daily NewsGary ThompsonDec 20, 2018
Ben is Back, operating with the flexibility of fiction, flirts with the idea that a mother’s intuition and love can be decisive, even as it acknowledges the pitiless, relentless nature of the disease. Or maybe all the movie wants to propose is that miracles — rare as they are — can happen. Read full review
75
The Seattle TimesMoira MacdonaldDec 19, 2018
Most of all, you see Roberts, who takes hold of this movie like a lamppost in the winter darkness. That huge Julia Roberts smile turns up here, but it’s haunting. Read full review
75
Boston GlobeTy BurrDec 12, 2018
Any movie on this subject that’s not uncomfortable isn’t really doing its job, and Ben Is Back puts an audience through a wringer of emotional and physical suspense. If you’ve dealt with addiction, personally or in your extended family, the movie should probably come with a trigger warning. Read full review
75
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsDec 12, 2018
This addiction drama is primarily a showcase for its superb leading performers, and in its compressed time frame (24 hours around Christmas) it feels like a well-made play more than a fully amplified feature film. The acting is enough, though. Read full review
75
New York PostJohnny OleksinskiDec 11, 2018
Although “Ben” can get a little sentimental at times, Roberts and Hedges are a team to root for. Read full review
75
RogerEbert.comChristy LemireDec 7, 2018
Hedges’ film is stronger in its first half, when it’s an understated character drama, than in its second half, when it morphs into a contrived crime thriller. But the performances remain uniformly strong and hold the story together, even as it threatens to spin out of control. Read full review
75
The Associated PressJocelyn NoveckDec 5, 2018
Hedges is as excellent as he was in “Manchester By the Sea,” but it’s fair to say the movie belongs to Roberts. It’s a career peak, and a performance that deserves to be seen no matter how crowded your holiday moviegoing schedule. Read full review
75
IndieWireDavid EhrlichSep 12, 2018
Beneath its overworked plot — and a Julia Roberts performance that toes the line between maternal desperation and movie-screen broadness — this is a tender and knowing story about the salvation that an addict can find within their family, and the toll that addiction can take on it. Read full review
70
Arizona RepublicSamantha IncorvaiaDec 13, 2018
The whole cast does a phenomenal job. The movie is worth seeing purely for their performances, especially Newton, who gracefully balances the role of a caring yet apprehensive sister. Read full review
70
New York Magazine (Vulture)David EdelsteinDec 10, 2018
It’s a good idea done well until the last 20 minutes, when the leap from a realistic addiction drama to a hair’s-breadth Hollywood rescue movie is too jarring to ignore. Read full review
70
Rolling StonePeter TraversDec 5, 2018
Ben Is Back ends up becoming into a penetrating look at how addiction wrecks lives from both sides of the parent-child equation. It’s unflinching and unforgettable. Read full review
70
The Hollywood ReporterJohn DeForeSep 12, 2018
The film is aware of the weight of its subject but loath to behave like an "important" film — focusing instead on the specificity of one sick young man and the family that loves and fears him in almost equal measure. Read full review
70
VarietyPeter DebrugeSep 12, 2018
The entire film is that rarest of gifts for its cast, providing virtually every character with a chance to play not only the present moment, but the complicated history they’ve established with Ben in the past, as well as whatever chance they see in the troubled young man’s future. Read full review
67
Austin ChronicleDanielle WhiteDec 19, 2018
An impactful film, one that’s made for the season of giving, if giving means never giving up. Read full review
67
Christian Science MonitorPeter RainerDec 14, 2018
Roberts, in her “serious” performances, is often a tad too stiff and monochromic, but she works well here with Hedges, who knows how to be volatile without chewing the scenery. They are quite believable as mother and son. Read full review
67
The PlaylistJordan RuimySep 12, 2018
It’s an uneven film, but a deeply passionate one that also features an A-list actress at the top of her game. Read full review
63
ReelViewsJames BerardinelliJan 1, 2019
The scenario explored by Ben is Back starts out strongly but, with writer/director Peter Hedges unwilling to remain firmly rooted within the hard, mundane rhythms of a family drama, it loses focus and borders on the preposterous as it races toward an improbable climax. Read full review
63
Vanity FairK. Austin CollinsDec 16, 2018
The film doesn’t glamorize addiction, or make it irrationally melodramatic, or gussy itself up in bespoke tragedy. (The same cannot be said of Beautiful Boy.) It’s all just right—even if “just right” is just O.K. Read full review
60
The Observer (UK)Simran HansMar 18, 2019
The material feels more like a play than a film, its drama shrunk down into a single, digestible day, but it’s affecting in its muted seriousness. Read full review
60
EmpireLiz BeardsworthMar 11, 2019
Ben Is Back begins with nuance but is let down by its familiar Drugs Are Hell tropes. Still, the pairing of the ever-excellent Roberts and Hedges keep it a largely compelling watch. Read full review
60
Time OutJoshua RothkopfDec 27, 2018
Ben Is Back has seriousness in mind, but too much showmanship in the making. Read full review
60
Los Angeles TimesJustin ChangDec 6, 2018
By the end of this clumsy, audacious story — the title of which turns out to have a doozy of a double meaning — Ben will be stripped of every last secret and falsehood, left with no more room to run or hide. You believe him at long last, even if believing the movie is a trickier proposition. Read full review
50
Washington PostMark JenkinsDec 11, 2018
The tight time frame gives the movie a welcome urgency, but it doesn’t prevent its second half from becoming lurid and melodramatic. Read full review
50
The A.V. ClubA.A. Dowd Dec 6, 2018
Ben Is Back, which buries its promise, premise, and stray traces of insight under a heap of narrative contrivance, leaves you itching for a drama with something solid to actually say about addiction. Read full review
50
Slant MagazinePaul O'CallaghanDec 3, 2018
As the film hurtles toward its tense climax, you may find yourself both deeply resenting its narrative contrivances and passionately rooting for its protagonists. Read full review
50
TimeStephanie ZacharekNov 30, 2018
The movie is so assertively about the social issue at its heart – the way opioid addiction tears families apart – that it barely leaves room for its characters to breathe. At times it feels more as if they’re spokespeople with jobs to do. That takes its toll on both lead actors, especially Roberts: one minute she’s Denial Mom, the next she’s Tough Love Mom. Read full review
40
CineVueChristopher MachellMar 18, 2019
Aside from its unremarkable presentation, Ben Is Back’s major hurdle, and the one that it never manages to clear, is that it’s yet another story of a rich, white young man wasting his future. Read full review
40
The TelegraphRobbie CollinMar 14, 2019
The whole is rather less than its constituent parts – which didn’t really fit together in the first place. Read full review
40
The GuardianBenjamin LeeSep 12, 2018
There are good intentions and good performances here, but they’re squandered in a movie that isn’t quite sure what it should be and how far it should go. Read full review
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