Where'd You Go, Bernadette
Annapurna Distribution | Release Date: August 16, 2019 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
51
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 39 Critic Reviews
Positive:
14
Mixed:
18
Negative:
7
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
83
Original-CinKaren GordonAug 17, 2019
It’s not always a comfortable place to be, but with Linklater explores it here with humour, rather than pathos. And once again, with his persistent humanism, he offers us a question worth exploring. Read full review
80
Arizona RepublicMelissa YeagerAug 16, 2019
Overall the movie is a delightful escape with several laugh-out-loud moments. It's definitely worth "girls night out" or "mom-and-daughter" trip to the movies. Read full review
78
Austin ChronicleMarjorie BaumgartenAug 14, 2019
One of Linklater’s greatest filmmaking instincts involves his casting decisions. Newcomer Emma Nelson is a real find as Bernadette’s daughter. Although Blanchett’s performance seems a bit mannered and slightly reminiscent of her Oscar-winning performance in "Blue Jasmine," these are hardly flaws when the outcome is so riveting. Wiig beautifully toes a difficult line between drama and comedy. It’s a line similar to the one etched by this film: an emotional crisis mixed with laughs. Read full review
75
Washington PostAnn HornadayAug 14, 2019
If the family dynamics feel perfunctory and too-neatly resolved by the end of Where’d You Go, Bernadette, Blanchett’s nuanced portrayal of stymied creativity, exacting taste and sensibilities too bold and well-judged for an uncaring world manages to be funny and uncompromising in equal measure. Read full review
75
The Film StageJordan RaupAug 14, 2019
One imagines how over-the-top zany this could have been made, had the adaptation been overtly faithful, yet Linklater is able to extract the heart of the story while injecting some of his own characteristic themes. Read full review
70
Film ThreatAlan NgAug 19, 2019
The problem with the film is although we walk away from the theater with a good feeling inside, the film lacks an edge…particularly a dark one. Everyone in the movie is good, wholesome people. No one’s really the villain. Bernadette’s problem is not all that surprising. Read full review
70
The New YorkerAnthony LaneAug 17, 2019
Where’d You Go, Bernadette has to be seen, and demands to be believed, because of Cate Blanchett. Like “Blue Jasmine” (2013), which earned her a second Oscar, this new film lies at her command. Read full review
70
CNNBrian LowryAug 15, 2019
"Where'd You Go, Bernadette" offers a solid showcase for Cate Blanchett, in a movie that's notably slight, but finally sweet and touching. Read full review
70
SlateDana StevensAug 14, 2019
The aspect of the book Linklater has chosen to focus on, and the one he infuses with playfulness and warmth, is the complex bond between a flawed but loving mother and her devoted if perhaps too-responsible child. Read full review
70
Los Angeles TimesKenneth TuranAug 14, 2019
The film is not without its problems, but its focus on the power of a mother-daughter bond and what can befall creative people when they no longer create generates considerable emotion by the close. Read full review
67
Entertainment WeeklyLeah GreenblattAug 14, 2019
Linklater, who brought such subtle, generous feeling to films like Boyhood and the Sunset trilogy, feels somehow miscast as the steward of Bernadette‘s willful eccentricities. Read full review
63
LarsenOnFilmJosh LarsenAug 20, 2019
Ungainly in many ways (inconsistent in tone, unconvincing in locale, contrived in its plotting), Where’d You Go, Bernadette manages two stellar sequences that are raw and truthful enough to salvage the movie. Read full review
63
ReelViewsJames BerardinelliAug 15, 2019
Although Where’d You Go, Bernadette suffers from an ungainly structure and uneven pacing, the production as a whole is engaging and uplifting. Read full review
63
Philadelphia Daily NewsGary ThompsonAug 15, 2019
Linklater is a naturally empathetic filmmaker, and you can feel him trying to find something he can latch onto in the Desperate Housewives cat-fighting that dominates the movie in the early going. He’s helped ultimately by the story, and by the performances of Blanchett and Wiig, who are given room to embellish their characters and relationships. Read full review
60
The AtlanticDavid SimsAug 19, 2019
The cast is stacked, but the story is messy, and the pathos driving Bernadette’s disappearance (which, again, is easily solved) is underwritten. Read full review
60
TheWrapElizabeth WeitzmanAug 14, 2019
Those who arrive without any preconceptions — or are willing to stray from the novel’s style — will appreciate the assets of a modestly engaging and gently touching dramedy. Read full review
60
The New York TimesManohla DargisAug 14, 2019
Amusing and sleepy pretty much describe this movie. Read full review
58
IndieWireDavid EhrlichAug 14, 2019
The more engaging question is where Bernadette disappeared to for the two decades before the movie begins. It may not be much of a mystery, but where Bernadette went is far more believable and broadly real a story than where she ends up. It’s a story that’s too complicated for Linklater to tell here. Read full review
50
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsAug 15, 2019
It’s a morose sort of screwball comedy with heart, and right there that’s three elements going in related but separate directions. Read full review
50
Boston GlobeTy BurrAug 15, 2019
Mishandles Maria Semple’s best-selling comic novel into a clattery mess. There are deftly human moments to be found, but you have to dig for them like potatoes. Read full review
50
The Seattle TimesMoira MacdonaldAug 15, 2019
Like Bernadette, the movie’s lost; you’ll need to read the book to truly find her. Read full review
50
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleAug 14, 2019
There are a lot of little things wrong with Where’d You Go, Bernadette, but one big thing right: Cate Blanchett. She takes the title role and has a party with it. The little things wrong can’t be summed up in a sentence, but they linger in the mind and intrude on the memory of the movie, once the bedazzlement of Blanchett’s performance starts to wear off. Read full review
50
Screen DailyTim GriersonAug 14, 2019
No matter Linklater’s efforts to keep the proceedings grounded in a light realism, this inherently melodramatic, sometimes absurdist material resists his naturalistic tendencies. Read full review
50
Chicago Sun-TimesRichard RoeperAug 14, 2019
In a rare weak performance for Cate Blanchett, she plays an aggravating, off-putting wife and mother in Richard Linklater’s disappointing book adaptation. Read full review
50
The A.V. ClubJesse HassengerAug 14, 2019
To his credit, it probably would have been easy to turn this particular book into a quasi-satirical parade of withering takedowns. Turning it into a flavorless, center-less journey of self-discovery was likely a lot more work. That doesn’t make it any easier to watch. Read full review
50
VarietyOwen GleibermanAug 14, 2019
Linklater, as brilliant a filmmaker as he is, is a kind of Zen rationalist; his shot language and essential humanity invite us to look at Bernadette and think, “You need help.” But that stops the character, even in her baroquely witty lashing out, from becoming a projection of a larger passion. Read full review
50
The Hollywood ReporterTodd McCarthyAug 14, 2019
Richard Linklater's 19th feature becomes compelling in its final act, but before that too often appears tonally addled and dramatically dawdling. Read full review
50
Rolling StonePeter TraversAug 14, 2019
It’s the human devastation that gets short shrift in a movie that turns the hot, hilarious, out-for-blood Bernadette into the thing she hates most: conventional. Read full review
42
ConsequenceClint WorthingtonAug 14, 2019
Not quite a domestic mystery, not quite a fascinating character study of a frustrated creative, Bernadette feels half-hearted in just about every respect. Read full review
42
The PlaylistChris BarsantiAug 14, 2019
Try as the filmmakers do to conjure a restorative kind of magic in its searching, yearning storyline of renewal, they are not able to come up with much more than a limping comedy about a woman with all-too-easily-explained mental issues. Read full review
40
New York Magazine (Vulture)David EdelsteinAug 17, 2019
He’s a deceptively crafty director (he fakes naturalism beautifully in movies like "Dazed and Confused," "Before Sunrise," and "Boyhood"), but he can’t find a suitable form for Maria Semple’s patchwork best seller about a misanthropic, malcontented ex-architect named Bernadette. Read full review
40
The GuardianBenjamin LeeAug 14, 2019
It’s the kind of adaptation that is so misjudged that you end up struggling to see why anyone thought it a good idea to adapt in the first place. Read full review
38
ObserverOliver JonesAug 16, 2019
It is the Oscar winner’s most affected performance to date, which is truly saying something when you consider that she has already played both Katherine Hepburn and Bob Dylan. Read full review
38
RogerEbert.comMonica CastilloAug 16, 2019
It’s a privileged perspective with nothing to share for the rest of us. Read full review
38
Movie NationRoger MooreAug 14, 2019
Richard Linklater’s film of Where’d You Go Bernadette may offer the great Cate Blanchett a star vehicle she can sink her incisors into. But rather than a meaty meal, it’s a gooey goulash of randomly expressed “feels.” Read full review
38
Slant MagazineCarson LundAug 14, 2019
The film is a curiously anodyne affair that proposes the distinctly unenlightening idea that the medicine against despair is just a little R&R. Read full review
30
VoxAlissa WilkinsonAug 20, 2019
Bernadette is a soggy misfire, with sparks of possibility peppering a weirdly plodding tale. Read full review
25
New York PostJohnny OleksinskiAug 14, 2019
Linklater, a director who usually earns his sentiment, just can’t get the tone right. “Bernadette” is supposed to skewer the norms of family, suburban life and motherhood. While Bernadette should be a creature out of Wes Anderson, Blanchett and her director opt for “The Addams Family” instead. Nothing about it works. Read full review
25
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Barry HertzAug 14, 2019
There is, buried deep somewhere in Linklater’s film or however many edits it may have undergone – the thing reeks of indecision – an insightful, even invigorating story about what happens to a creative genius once they stop creating. But the actual work presents a good argument that, for some artists, it might be best to quit while you’re ahead. Read full review
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