RBG
Magnolia Pictures | Release Date: May 4, 2018 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
71
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 32 Critic Reviews
Positive:
28
Mixed:
3
Negative:
1
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
91
Entertainment WeeklyLeah GreenblattMay 2, 2018
RBG is an unapologetic valentine to Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, but a sharp and spiky one too. Read full review
90
SlateDahlia LithwickApr 30, 2018
This is more than just the predictable story of who Ginsburg was and who she has become. It’s also a monument to the formal written legal legacy that transcends her own life story and changed a nation. Read full review
83
The Film StageJohn FinkMar 9, 2018
Intimate without being obtrusive, RBG doesn’t exactly demystify the Supreme Court so much as it brings us closer to one of its greats. Read full review
83
IndieWireKate ErblandMar 9, 2018
Ginsburg’s life — and its many lessons, both learned and taught — come to entertaining and energetic life. It’s a fist-pumping, crowd-pleasing documentary that makes one heck of a play to remind people of Ginsburg’s vitality and importance, now more than ever. Read full review
80
EmpireBeth WebbJan 2, 2019
This is the origin film we really need right now. Directors Cohen and West have brought a liberal trailblazer’s fascinating and largely untold story proudly into the spotlight. Read full review
80
Time OutJoshua RothkopfMay 4, 2018
Finding reciprocity—in the eyes of the law, your partner, your colleagues—is the essence of this documentary, one that comes at a moment that desperately lacks it. Read full review
80
Los Angeles TimesKenneth TuranMay 3, 2018
Make no mistake about it, this woman is a force, and the great service this clear-eyed and admiring documentary provides is to emphasize not just Ginsburg's work on the court but how extraordinarily influential she was before she even got there. Read full review
80
Arizona RepublicBill GoodykoontzMay 3, 2018
RBG, Betsy West and Julie Cohen’s engrossing documentary about Ruth Bader Ginsburg, is clearly meant to praise the 85-year-old Supreme Court justice, and it does a fine job of it. Read full review
80
The Hollywood ReporterLeslie FelperinMar 9, 2018
A documentary that, like its subject, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is eminently sober, well-mannered, highly intelligent, scrupulous and just a teeny-weeny bit reassuringly dull. Read full review
80
VarietyAmy NicholsonMar 9, 2018
This spry celebration reveals that the real Ginsburg is neither beast nor badass, but an even-tempered, soft-spoken mediator—not typically the traits that inspire rousing high-fives, but qualities that honor the slow, uphill slog of positive change. Read full review
75
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Kate TaylorMay 17, 2018
In RBG, a lionizing biography of the U.S. Supreme Court judge, Ginsburg emerges as a woman of remarkable intelligence and fortitude – who can get by on very little sleep. Read full review
75
Philadelphia Daily NewsGary ThompsonMay 10, 2018
Brisk and informative. Read full review
75
Christian Science MonitorPeter RainerMay 4, 2018
The film makes clear that the soft-spoken, diminutive Ginsburg fought early and hard for gender equality in the courts in her own steadfastly clearsighted way. She’s the opposite of a late bloomer. Read full review
75
Rolling StoneDavid FearMay 4, 2018
You just wish the film itself was half as compelling as its subject; not defaulting to piano-tinkling sentimentality or old-people-sure-are-adorable cutesiness at every opportunity would have been a bonus as well. Read full review
75
Movie NationRoger MooreMay 3, 2018
No, there are NOT enough dissenting voices in the film, she’s that popular. But it’s jarring to see the turn the film, and the country take, away from civility, a steady march toward equal rights and the profane, law-flouting death-to-mine-enemies, progress-torching culture we’re moved into. Read full review
75
Boston GlobeTy BurrMay 2, 2018
A documentary love letter to Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and it assumes you love her too. Read full review
75
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleMay 2, 2018
Ginsburg herself is determined to last. Several scenes show her working out with a trainer. Her goal is to live long enough for a Democratic president to appoint her successor. Read full review
75
ConsequenceCaroline SiedeMay 2, 2018
There’s certainly an argument to be made that Ginsburg’s patient “one step at a time” philosophy is no longer the ideal approach, especially in an era where the power of female anger is being reclaimed. But RBG convincingly argues that Ginsburg herself is a figure worth admiring, whether or not you agree with her politics and whether or not you like those memes. Read full review
75
Washington PostMichael O'SullivanMay 1, 2018
Despite her biting legal writing, she comes across, on camera, as unfailingly mild-mannered, decorous and polite, especially when the film explores her rather unlikely friendship, based on a shared love of opera, with her late conservative colleague Antonin Scalia. Read full review
70
Village VoiceBilge EbiriMay 9, 2018
As a work of feel-good advocacy, it checks pretty much all the boxes, making its way through the key cases of her career, while also offering a personal look at the woman herself. Yet it’s hard not to want more from RBG, precisely because its subject is so remarkable and her ideas so consequential. Read full review
70
New York Magazine (Vulture)David EdelsteinMay 7, 2018
Both the film and the “notorious” figure at its center are the best imaginable retaliation to mansplaining. Read full review
70
TheWrapInkoo KangMay 3, 2018
Surely Ginsburg is far more interesting than her devotees, her enemies, or this film make her out to be. Read full review
70
Wall Street JournalJoe MorgensternMay 3, 2018
What makes the film valuable is its focus on Justice Ginsburg as a champion of women’s rights. Read full review
70
The New York TimesA.O. ScottMay 3, 2018
Directed by Betsy West and Julie Cohen, the film is a jaunty assemblage of interviews, public appearances and archival material, organized to illuminate its subject’s temperament and her accomplishments so far. Read full review
67
Austin ChronicleKimberley JonesMay 2, 2018
Dissent – or a remotely critical eye – doesn’t have any place in RBG; this is an entirely admiring doc. Read full review
65
Vanity FairK. Austin CollinsMay 11, 2018
The documentary sees Ginsburg as an icon and hero first—and within that (I hesitate to say “second”) it sees her as the prodigious, idiosyncratic legal mind that she is. Somewhere in the process, rich contradictions and complexities get the slightest bit overlooked. Read full review
63
ReelViewsJames BerardinelliMay 9, 2018
Despite its overly praiseworthy tone, there are areas of interest. Read full review
63
RogerEbert.comSheila O'MalleyMay 4, 2018
Cohen and West's approach is so adulatory that the documentary becomes a surface-level work of hagiography. Read full review
60
The GuardianPeter BradshawJan 16, 2019
For good or ill, the film does not directly engage with Ginsburg’s views on contemporary feminism and sexual harassment and what is sometimes derisively called identity politics. Read full review
60
The Observer (UK)Wendy IdeJan 16, 2019
It’s not a showy piece of film-making, but then this indomitable 85-year-old is not an ostentatious person. Read full review
42
The A.V. ClubIgnatiy VishnevetskyMay 1, 2018
Breathlessly superficial, school-presentation-ish documentary. Read full review
38
Slant MagazineKeith WatsonApr 30, 2018
The film rarely presents a clear analysis of Ruth Bader Ginsburg's victories, reducing her work to empty slogans. Read full review
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