Miss Potter (2006)
Average Rating: 6.2/10
Reviews Counted: 125
Fresh: 82 | Rotten: 43
A charming biopic with that maintains its sweetness even in sadder moments.
Average Rating: 5.9/10
Critic Reviews: 43
Fresh: 23 | Rotten: 20
A charming biopic with that maintains its sweetness even in sadder moments.
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Average Rating: 3.2/5
User Ratings: 327,439
Movie Info
The true story of the woman who created some of the most beloved characters in children's literature comes to the screen in this drama leavened with elements of comedy and romance. Beatrix Potter (Renée Zellweger) is a imaginative but gently eccentric woman living in the socially and intellectually confining circumstances of Victorian England. Potter's wealthy parents are eager for her to marry a successful man and settle down, but she has ideas of her own, and has been writing and illustrating
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Cast
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Renée Zellweger
Beatrix Potter -
Ewan McGregor
Norman Warne -
Emily Watson
Millie Warne -
Barbara Flynn
Mrs. Potter -
Bill Paterson
Rupert Potter -
Matyelok Gibbs
Miss Wiggin -
Lloyd Owen
William Heelis -
Anton Lesser
Harold Warne -
David Bamber
Fruing Warne -
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Phyllida Law
Mrs. Warne -
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Lucy Boynton
Young Beatrix -
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All Critics (129) | Top Critics (44) | Fresh (82) | Rotten (43) | DVD (14)
Miss Potter is as seamless, comfortable and tidy as a Peter Rabbit story, all scones and biscuits, quietly punctuated by tolerable naughtiness.
Top CriticOne of those films that commits few egregious errors, but scales few real heights. There is nothing either terribly wrong or keenly right about it. It's tidy, I suppose.
The film offers scant insight into the forces that inspired Potter's phenomenally successful career.
If the source material is soft, the film then takes another punch with the casting of Renée Zellweger in the title role. She overflows with tics and twitches that make the author seem vaguely deranged.
With Miss Potter, Renee Zellweger has won back that precious thing that stardom rips away and the tabloids won't let you reclaim: her charm.
Unbearably, the script accommodates a quaking courtship between the slightly dotty Potter and her devoted young publisher, ho exchange romantic byplay such as, "You and rabbits -- extraordinary!" and "I recently remembered a story...about a duck!"
Miss Potter is too well crafted to actually be bad, but it's too light to be better than good. An entertaining trifle, but a trifle nonetheless.
The movie is made to measure for mothers, aunts and grandmothers who would share Potter's books, such as "The Tale of Peter Rabbit," with tikes of any generation.
A Beatrix Potter biopic: So much more than just cute and fuzzy bunnies.
While it cannot sustain the fairytale enchantment of something like Finding Neverland, Miss Potter is, nonetheless, a worthy and sweet, middle-of-the-road biopic.
There's nothing inherently wrong with MISS POTTER. It's just a throwback to the biopics of the 1930s and 40s and in some ways it may seem progressive to contemporary audiences.
Much like star Renée Zellweger's portrayal of its famous title character, Miss Potter is a strange, split-personality kind of thing.
Portraying a real-life hero can be a tough assignment. But Zellweger breezes through the role, flashing her puckish grin, talking in her soft, breathy voice and giving very human face to one of the most beloved figures of English letters.
For fans of Potter's work, "Miss Potter" is indispensable. But even viewers with the haziest memories of those unique little books will enjoy spending 90 minutes inside her idyllic world.
Director Chris Noonan ('Babe') gives us a story with the right balance of humor, pathos and romance.
Deftly navigating the line between the sublime and the saccharine ...
A film of no little charm, Chris Noonan's Miss Potter never quite gets out of 'Biopic Basic' mode despite occasional murmurings of a desire to be something more.
Something of a muddle....The level of social criticism and psychological portraiture shifts from Howard's End to Mary Poppins.
Enchanting, perhaps, but a long, long way from meaningful.
Miss Potter is not a bad film, but it is a more tepid treatment than the facts of her life would seem to call for. Beatrix Potter deserves better.
It's buttoned-up to a fault, as proper as clotted cream, and at times as exciting.
[Zellwegger's and McGregor's] performances bring great joy to this picture, which is slight but satisfying, like a favorite children's book revisited as an adult.
Much as I admire this plucky child of privilege, who was 36 when she became a best-selling author in 1902, I didn't find her life compelling in this version by screenwriter Richard Maltby Jr. and director Chris Noonan.
Even a third-act tragedy can't taint the picture's perpetual cheeriness -- which works fine when Miss Potter functions as a wholesome family film and not so well when it strives for some measure of dramatic heft.
You have to love a movie in which a little white rabbit literally jumps off the page to excite a writer's imagination, or winks at her to encourage her dreams.
Miss Potter isn't deep, but it is curiously endearing. Anyone who has ever been charmed by a Potter book will be equally charmed by this cinematic take on her life.
Audience Reviews for Miss Potter
Super Reviewer
Super Reviewer
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- Beatrix Potter: You think that's lucky? Your mother is a monster! No, its fine. My mother and I have come to an understanding. We've agreed to not understand each other.
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- Beatrix Potter: There's something delicious about writing those first few words of a story. You can never quite tell where they will take you. Mine took me here, where I belong.
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Movie: ID: 426555067 Title: Miss Potter Release Date: 2007-01-12 00:00:00.0 MPAA: 2 Status: 1
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