Ladies in Lavender Reviews

Smith is rather wasted...Perhaps if the actresses had exchanged roles, this pallid palette would have had more emotional color.

Full Review

One wonders how much of their performances came from Dance's direction and how much came from the actresses themselves, but what counts is what is there on the screen, which is more than satisfactory.

Full Review

Filled with wonderful music and magnificent, subtle acting. The story, however, goes nowhere at a glacial pace.

Full Review | Original Score: C+

Maggie Smith and Judi Dench are a great duo, but the film isn't so great.

Remaining locked in Ursula and Janet's fantasies, Ladies in Lavender evades complexity with monomania.

Full Review

Dance is so tentative and tasteful in his direction that he never draws out the underlying emotions beneath the polite exteriors.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4

There's something irresistibly admirable about Dance's decision to make a film based on a short story by a long-out-of-favor writer like William J. Locke.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5

...such a civilized and handsome film that we might be willing to forgive its lack of drama

Full Review | Original Score: B

It's a British period piece, full of the sylvan Cornish coast and countryside, vintage motorcars, steam threshers and sensibilities. Pity they left out a compelling plot.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5

A well-executed Masterpiece Theater leisurely-paced type of drama.

Full Review | Original Score: B-

There is nothing like a Dame. Ladies in Lavender boasts two: Judi Dench and Maggie Smith. And they're enough to make this cinematic tea cozy eminently watchable.

Full Review | Original Score: B-

Dench and Smith are the sort of performers that students of fine acting are pleased to watch in anything, even if it's sweet-but-unsatisfying, unremarkable stuff like this.

Full Review | Original Score: B-

Dance sets up a charming premise and then slowly lets the air out of it over the course of 100 minutes, limping to a predictable and pat conclusion.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5

Watching seasoned British actresses Judi Dench and Maggie Smith work together ... is visual and verbal poetry in motion.

| Original Score: 3/4

It's sweet, but ultimately, unfulfilling and hollow.

| Original Score: 2/4

The movie recognizes that older women aren't exclusively cute, comical, feisty, eccentric or wise. They also can be petty, morose and sexual.

| Original Score: '3/4'

The film does have Dench and Smith, which counts for a lot. And watching the two of them is at least moderately entertaining.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4

The story slowly - way too slowly - descends into silly soap opera that robs the stars, especially Dench as a moony spinster, of their dignity.

| Original Score: 1.5/4

Embalmed in a thick oil of expansive inoffensiveness.

Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/4

A fascinating and involving chamber piece for two superb actresses.

Full Review | Original Score: B