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CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION | ||
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Positive:
11
Mixed:
11
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews
Apr 21, 2017
Season 1 Review:
None of this would be possible, after all, without a massive core of empathy, both on the part of Lacks's screenwriters in finding a way to convey the feelings and thoughts of a woman who resists exposition and on the part of Winfrey, who brings makes the story's emotionality ring true.
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TV Guide MagazineApr 17, 2017
Season 1 Review:
There is traumatic yet necessary catharsis along the way as Henrietta (a luminous Renee Elise Goldsberry) comes into focus, finally getting the respect and thanks she deserves. [17-30 Apr 2017, p.19]
Apr 18, 2017
Season 1 Review:
Deborah’s decision to allow Skloot to see her mother’s closely guarded medical records is a major turning point in the book, but it doesn’t register as momentous in the film. That said, Rose Byrne provides an impressive array of reactions as Skloot, even if her character never quite comes alive the way Deborah does. And yet some sequences of the film are quite affecting, in large part thanks to Winfrey’s galvanizing presence.
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Apr 17, 2017
Season 1 Review:
Fine performances and a fascinating true story buoy this disappointing adaptation of Rebecca Skloot's bestseller. [21 Apr 2017, p.58]
Apr 24, 2017
Season 1 Review:
In the end, there's poignancy to how The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks acknowledges how Rebecca's correcting of the record helped to ease this family's pain, but you may wish that the film more polemically recognized Henrietta's place in a long-standing tendency in America to erase black men and women from the reality of their own lives.
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Apr 21, 2017
Season 1 Review:
The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks is too sentimental for its own good. It’s not really fair to compare a film to its original source material--books and movies are different mediums with different strengths--but it’s hard not to rue what’s lost in this version, which skimps over both the science and the relationships that form the heart of Skloot’s book. At least Winfrey’s performance brings Deb to boisterous, believable life.
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IndieWireApr 19, 2017
Season 1 Review:
The film is torn between assigning drama to Deborah’s unquantifiable emotional needs and the easily tracked progress of Skloot’s book. While Deborah seeks closure, Skloot seeks publishing, and though the link between the two is clear and necessary, we simply don’t care that much about a book being written when Deborah’s anguish is realized by Winfrey with such passion.
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Apr 24, 2017
Season 1 Review:
Winfrey’s performance as Deborah gives The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks its one bit of genuine brilliance. ... Beyond Winfrey, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks has the markings of a standard TV movie, though there’s a clear mismatch between form and content.
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Apr 21, 2017
Season 1 Review:
It’s a role that could fall into caricature, but Ms. Winfrey brings vulnerability and believability to the part. Henrietta Lacks also benefits from a strong supporting cast. ... The film, directed by George C. Wolfe (“Lackawanna Blues”), stumbles most profoundly in the way it wraps up. The conclusion to the 90-minute film comes too quickly with an abrupt shift in tone.
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Apr 17, 2017
Season 1 Review:
With the exception of Renée Elise Goldsberry--who gives a half-saintly, half-corporeal dignity to Henrietta herself in a few brief flashback scenes--director and cowriter George C. Wolfe, a terrific theater artist, seems to have instructed Winfrey, Byrne and the rest of the cast to play to some nonexistent rafters. And this only pays off twice.
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