The Trip to Bountiful

Island Pictures | Release Date: January 24, 1986

CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION

81	METASCORE Universal acclaim based on 10 Critic Reviews

Positive:

Mixed:

Negative:

Watch Now

Buy on

Stream On

Critic Reviews

Critic score Publication By date

100

Vincent Canby

Horton Foote's funny, exquisitely performed film adaptation of his own play, directed for the screen by Peter Masterson. The Trip to Bountiful is almost as unstoppable as Carrie Watts. Read full review

100

Staff (Not Credited)

The Trip to Bountiful is a superbly crafted drama featuring the performance of a lifetime by Geraldine Page. Read full review

100

TV Guide MagazineStaff (Not Credited)

No guns, no violence, no nudity--just a caring story that will wet the driest eye and warm the coldest heart. Every single role is perfectly cast and perfectly played, and Horton Foote's script is a marvel of economy. Read full review

Roger Ebert

The Trip to Bountiful has a quiet, understated feel for the small towns of its time. Read full review

Dolores Barclay

The cast is marvelously filled out with John Heard as Ludie and Carlin Glynn as Jessie Mae. As an ensemble, it is as fine a cast as one could want. [6 Jan 1986]

Gene Siskel

It is played out in such a special, gentle way that you will want to anticipate and savor it for yourself. [31 Jan 1986, p.30N]

Bill Cosford

This lovely movie, impeccably made in nearly every way, has entirely too much right about it to be resisted. [21 Feb 1986, p.D1]

Staff (Not Credited)

Masterson's images of small-town America are imbued with a luminous and melancholy nostalgia, but otherwise the film is not mounted with any special imagination, and its fusty, old-fashioned (not to say reactionary) lauding of homespun values sticks in the craw. Read full review

Dave Kehr

First-timer Peter Masterson directed; his notion of film is to point the camera in the general direction of the actors. Read full review

Pauline Kael

Foote can't make poetry out of material as laundered and denatured as what he comes up with here. The movie is intended to by a hymn, but all he and Masterson can do is give some of the characters a limp, anesthetized grace.