Avaliações do Metacritic

Johansson and her excellent cast nail the big moments and revel in the small ones.

It adds up to a fascinating, if often baffling first effort from Johannson and Kamen, one not afraid of big emotional wallops, but not always able to carry them into truly revelatory spaces. It’s a little predictable, a little bizarre, a little funny, and very sad, but it’s also an ambitious swing at what movies can still be.

At its weakest, there’s a suspicion that Eleanor The Great is leaning into the Holocaust for otherwise unearned emotion, but the piece is clearly genuine, and the cast so strong, it doesn’t linger.

The film lurches between comic set pieces and more dramatic beats, and while Johansson proves a competent helmer, it’s not enough to overcome some dizzying tonal imbalances.

The film’s saving grace, of course, is Squibb. When the movie needs her the most, she delivers. She brings the laughs and – almost – gives the film the emotional ending it’s aiming for.

This frankly odd film is misjudged and naive about the implications of its Holocaust theme. Its bland, TV-movie tone of sentimentality fails to accommodate the existential nightmare of the main plot strand, or indeed the subordinate question of when and whether to put your elderly parent in a care home.

Johansson, however, while she does a perfectly efficient job of directing, doesn’t hone the tone of her scenes. She keeps the whole thing earnest and rather neutral in a plot-driven way, with Squibb as her wild card.