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
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
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