The Zookeeper's Wife
Focus Features | Release Date: March 31, 2017 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
57
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 36 Critic Reviews
Positive:
17
Mixed:
19
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleMar 30, 2017
The Zookeeper’s Wife achieves its grandeur, not through the depiction of grand movements, but through its attentiveness to the shifts and flickers of the soul. Read full review
83
The Film StageChelsey GrassoMar 21, 2017
There’s something powerful to be read into every action, line, and image. Subtle yet striking, this is a film that is filled with the power of exquisitely executed storytelling. Read full review
80
Village VoiceApril WolfeMar 29, 2017
True to form, Caro seems unbound by her audience’s expectations of a WWII picture; she delivers a singular, thrilling portrait, filled with surprises and moving performances. Read full review
75
ObserverRex ReedMar 31, 2017
In the end, it’s the animals who conquer the emotions and provide the suspense in The Zookeeper’s Wife. Read full review
75
New York PostSara StewartMar 30, 2017
Caro (“Whale Rider”) largely forgoes the eardrum-shattering ballistics of a typical war movie — yes, there are bombings and shootings, but they’re the backdrop, not the focus. Her film dwells more in the aftermath of violence. Read full review
75
Chicago TribuneKatie WalshMar 30, 2017
The film's flaws in pacing and suspense are easily overlooked in the shadow of Chastain's moving performance, as well as the performances of those around her. Caro unspools an evergreen tale about the clarifying power of empathy to diffuse fear and hatred. Read full review
75
The Seattle TimesMoira MacdonaldMar 29, 2017
It’s a remarkable story, told in a movie that doesn’t always quite live up to it; except for a few crucial scenes, The Zookeeper’s Wife feels a bit too soft-focus for the devastating story it tells. Read full review
70
New York Daily NewsJoe DziemianowiczMar 30, 2017
Antonina is often seen and cradling animals — a lion, a monkey, a rabbit. Fitting, since Chastain elevates and handily carries The Zookeeper’s Wife. Read full review
70
Los Angeles TimesKenneth TuranMar 30, 2017
An emotional experience that is straight-ahead but satisfying. Read full review
67
Austin ChronicleMarjorie BaumgartenApr 5, 2017
Despite its inadequacies, however, The Zookeeper’s Wife conveys a tale of courage and opposition to authority that provides valuable inspiration for any era. Read full review
67
The A.V. ClubEsther ZuckermanMar 29, 2017
The Holocaust drama The Zookeeper’s Wife is handsomely made, well-acted, and lacking in much nuance. Read full review
67
Entertainment WeeklyLeah GreenblattMar 29, 2017
Even at its most engaging (those cubs!), Zookeeper can’t help evoking the dozens of films that have told these stories before, and better. Read full review
67
IndieWireDavid EhrlichMar 20, 2017
Decency, in its raw, instinctive form, is ultimately what earns The Zookeeper’s Wife a place in the self-conflicted canon of Holocaust cinema. Read full review
63
Rolling StonePeter TraversMar 30, 2017
What makes the film worthwhile, despite its flaws, are those scenes of human and animal desperation that encapsulate the horrors of war. Read full review
63
St. Louis Post-DispatchCalvin WilsonMar 30, 2017
Little more than an old-fashioned melodrama, but for some moviegoers that will be enough. Read full review
63
Boston GlobeTy BurrMar 30, 2017
And there you have the problem with The Zookeeper’s Wife: Dialogue and plotting that keep this inspirational, mostly true story earthbound by hitting every note with a hammer. Read full review
63
Slant MagazineKenji FujishimaMar 27, 2017
The film imbues a pessimistic view of the seemingly bottomless depths of human cruelty with sorrowful tragic force. Read full review
60
The TelegraphRobbie CollinApr 29, 2017
There’s something glib, and occasionally maddening, about the film’s use of loveable fauna in peril to sentimentalise and sweeten what is, after all, an account of real human bravery in the face of an endlessly horrifying historical event. Read full review
60
EmpireLiz BeardsworthApr 24, 2017
A compelling story bolstered by engaging performances from Jessica Chastain and Daniel Brühl, let down by occasional awkward tonal shifts and clumsy plotting. Read full review
60
Time OutJoshua RothkopfMar 31, 2017
As Holocaust-era movies go (Chastain’s maternal saint begins to secretly hide Jews in her cellar), this one is neither too pretty nor too ugly—which might doom it to a particularly banal shade of detachment. Read full review
60
Arizona RepublicBill GoodykoontzMar 30, 2017
It’s a good movie about great heroism, and you wish it was more. Read full review
60
The GuardianJordan HoffmanMar 20, 2017
All told The Zookeeper’s Wife is a story worth telling, even if there are a good number of not-so-hot spots along the way. Read full review
60
Screen DailyTim GriersonMar 20, 2017
This considered, muted drama can’t escape a fussy tastefulness — not to mention inevitable comparisons to more crackling treatments of similar subject matter. Read full review
50
TimeStephanie ZacharekApr 3, 2017
But deeply earnest pictures aren't always great ones, and this movie's plot mechanics sometimes grind it down. The actors, at least, keep it breathing. Read full review
50
The PlaylistWill AshtonApr 3, 2017
Chastain is as good as ever, but it’s a shame that such a gripping, tender, and vulnerable performance is lost in a period drama as flat as this one. Read full review
50
ReelViewsJames BerardinelliMar 31, 2017
The problem isn’t the non-fiction book by Diane Ackerman around which the narrative has been constructed, but a series of “added” scenes and subplots that seem lifted from a bad B movie and have the unintended consequence of devaluing the story as a whole. Read full review
50
Christian Science MonitorPeter RainerMar 31, 2017
This story is powerful enough without our being heavily coaxed all the time how to feel. Read full review
50
Movie NationRoger MooreMar 31, 2017
There’s little tension, little sense of the suffering even if we understand the stakes. The best you can say about the whole enterprise is that it’s a righteous story, clumsily told. Read full review
50
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Kate TaylorMar 30, 2017
As her oddly unengaged zoologist husband, the Belgian actor Johan Heldenbergh appears to be working in a different movie altogether. Read full review
50
Washington PostStephanie MerryMar 30, 2017
It’s a story that promises major suspense, which only materializes occasionally. Read full review
50
RogerEbert.comSheila O'MalleyMar 29, 2017
As Antonina, though, Chastain seems bound up as an actress, held back in creating a character mainly by the demands of doing a Polish accent. Read full review
50
The New York TimesStephen HoldenMar 29, 2017
Ms. Chastain’s watchful, layered performance helps keep the film on an even keel, but it is not enough to prevent The Zookeeper’s Wife, with its reassuringly cuddly critters, from feeling like a Disney version of the Holocaust. Read full review
50
The Hollywood ReporterJon FroschMar 20, 2017
As with many other portrayals of this ugly period, the movie's central figures and their experiences have been cleansed of complexity, embalmed in a sort of hagiographic glaze that makes even the pain look pretty. Harrowing things happen, but it’s the easiest kind of "tough watch”; we know exactly what we’re supposed to feel and when we’re supposed to feel it. Read full review
50
VarietyPeter DebrugeMar 20, 2017
There’s no nice way to put it in this case, but The Zookeeper’s Wife has the unfortunate failing of rendering its human drama less interesting than what happens to the animals — and for a subject as damaging to our species as the Holocaust, that no small shortcoming. Read full review
40
Wall Street JournalJoe MorgensternMar 30, 2017
In a production based on a nonfiction book by Diane Ackerman, a brilliantly specific story has been reduced to conventional drama and synthetic heroics. Read full review
40
TheWrapRobert AbeleMar 20, 2017
The Żabińskis were as unfailingly heroic as it gets, but memorably rendering a resistance shouldn’t be so resistant itself to the rough-and-tumble humanity of the details, and the unsentimental doom that shrouded it all. Read full review
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