Mrs. Harris
HBO | Release Date: February 25, 2006
CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
70
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 21 Critic Reviews
Positive:
15
Mixed:
5
Negative:
1

Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
People WeeklyTom Gliatto
Season 1 Review: The tone here can be offputtingly strange: brittle, flinty yet over the top. [20 Feb 2006, p.37]
100
Chicago Sun-TimesDoug Elfman
Season 1 Review: Scene by scene, "Mrs. Harris" overcomes the rote nature of true crime stories. Read full review
88
New York Daily NewsDavid Hinckley
Season 1 Review: Their dance of love and rejection, of giddiness and bitterness, is a warped waltz, and Kingsley and Bening clearly relish every step. Read full review
80
L.A. WeeklyRobert Abele
Season 1 Review: This kind of brittlely accurate performance is something to watch in the hands of an actress like Bening, who seems incapable --even during the film’s most blackly humorous moments -- of a false, Fatal Attraction–like note. Read full review
80
Village VoiceJoy Press
Season 1 Review: Annette Bening is stunning in this smart biopic. Read full review
80
NewsdayDiane Werts
Season 1 Review: "Mrs. Harris" unfolds with a basic playfulness that keeps the mood light even as the story becomes dark indeed. Read full review
80
New York Magazine (Vulture)John Leonard
Season 1 Review: Entertaining... What [Nagy] has done is tailor this tabloid material to several different narrative tastes, which alternate as the movie shifts from love affair to temper tantrum to gunfire to murder trial and back again. Read full review
75
Entertainment WeeklyAlynda Wheat
Season 1 Review: Jean appears to have liked humiliation... Such masochism is hard to watch, even with a stellar cast. [24 Feb 2006, p.58]
75
Detroit Free PressMike Duffy
Season 1 Review: Simultaneously appealing and rather sadly appalling, "Mrs. Harris" gets at the messy truth of it all in a distinctively mischievous manner. Read full review
75
San Jose Mercury News/Contra Costa TimesCharlie McCollum
Season 1 Review: Bening provides the spark that drives "Mrs. Harris," keeping its darkly funny irony from degenerating into campy humor. Read full review
70
Pittsburgh Post-GazetteRob Owen
Season 1 Review: "Mrs. Harris" is interesting but not intimate. It's cold, aloof and distant, much like the relationship it depicts between the principal characters. Read full review
70
Chicago Tribune
Season 1 Review: Addicting, like watching a really grimy train wreck, this sorry, sordid tale of Harris' obsessive love and descent into prescription pill addiction is icy, ironic and typically HBO in the frankness of its sex talk. Read full review
70
Kansas City StarAaron Barnhart
Season 1 Review: The constant toing-and-froing of “Mrs. Harris” might have gotten tiresome, as an earlier HBO effort at revisionist biography, “The Life and Death of Peter Sellers,” did. Bening, though, is somehow able to conjure up a completely new mood for each time and setting. Read full review
70
Los Angeles TimesDaryl H. Miller
Season 1 Review: It's a psychologically rich study of love's mutability, presented in a boldly stylized, darkly comic manner. Read full review
63
New York PostLinda Stasi
Season 1 Review: Since I myself am a sucker for a true-crime cheesefest, I was loving this movie until I was rudely reminded by my friend Denise that, "This is neither good sleaze nor serious true crime! It's half a satire, and half a true crime movie!" Read full review
60
The New York TimesAlessandra Stanley
Season 1 Review: In this version, Mrs. Harris, at times appealing, at other times brittle and censorious, is hard to fathom. Read full review
60
Washington PostTom Shales
Season 1 Review: While the film could not be called a rollicking success, it seldom if ever pauses long enough to be ordinary, complacent or conventionally minded. Read full review
50
TV Guide MagazineMatt Roush
Season 1 Review: The movie's fun to watch, but also rather hollow, reminding me of last season's HBO movie The Life and Death of Peter Sellers. Both are well acted but with such obvious stories to tell they soon grow tiresome.
50
USA TodayRobert Bianco
Season 1 Review: The costumes are gorgeous, the sets are time-period gems, and the actors are among the best.... But the story to which they've been appended is hollow. It's like an exquisitely wrapped empty box. Read full review
40
Wall Street JournalDorothy Rabinowitz
Season 1 Review: Nagy's showy ventures in stylization, the raucous jokiness substituted for story are heavy encumbrances for this tale. Read full review
30
Boston GlobeMatthew Gilbert
Season 1 Review: Pointless and inert. Read full review
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