Beautiful, gentile, and oh-so-quaint, but utterly pointless and terminally boring. Zellweger's performance is both strange and misguided.
Miss Potter (2006)
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:120
Fresh:79
Rotten:41
Average Rating:6.2/10
Consensus: A charming biopic with that maintains its sweetness even in sadder moments.
Runtime: 1 hr 33 mins
Genre: Dramas
Theatrical Release:Dec 29, 2006 Limited
Box Office: $2,893,474
Synopsis: Beatrix Potter has delighted generations of children with her books. But she kept her own private life locked carefully away. Oscar-winning star Renee Zellweger is now bringing her secret story to... Beatrix Potter has delighted generations of children with her books. But she kept her own private life locked carefully away. Oscar-winning star Renee Zellweger is now bringing her secret story to the screen in "Miss Potter," the first film directed by Chris Noonan since his charming 1995 movie, Babe. It is set in the high summer days of late Victorian and Edwardian England, during which Beatrix develops her natural skills as artist and story-teller. When she finally publishes her debut book, The Tale of Peter Rabbit, she becomes a writing celebrity. It also leads to courtship and her first love with publisher Norman Warne, played by Ewan McGregor. Their relationship and his marriage proposal in July, 1905, was to change Beatrix's life for ever. It was a love which she could not announce - or even talk about. In high-society London, her parents had insisted she keep it from friends and neighbours. They considered her proposed wedding a mismatch. Warne, they said, was from ‘trade' and demanded that she carefully reconsider their life together. Beatrix allowed herself to be persuaded to leave her fiancé and London. It was supposed to be a time for reflection and calm. But, instead, she faced tragedy and loneliness and returned, with a different outlook. She became a woman of strong views and independence. She also built up a farming dynasty in the Lake District - a dynasty over which she took charge long after her writing career virtually ended in 1913. It established her as a woman ahead of her time. Despite becoming the world's most successful children's writer and a wealthy landowner and prize-winning farmer, she never forgot her first love. -- © Weinstein Co. [More]
Starring: Renée Zellweger, Emily Watson, Ewan McGregor, Lloyd Owen
Starring: Renée Zellweger, Emily Watson, Ewan McGregor, Lloyd Owen
Director: Chris Noonan
Director: Chris Noonan
Producer: Mike Medavoy, David Thwaites, Arnold Messer, Corey Sienega
Composer: Nigel Westlake
Studio: Weinstein Company
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Reviews for Miss Potter
About halfway through the film, however, it becomes obvious that Miss Potter is lacking a key element of good drama: conflict.
A bit paint-by-numbers, not to torture a pun out of all this, but when the story of Beatrix Potter, spinster book author and happenstance feminist, eventually does take shape, it is an emotionally and even politically potent story.
Starts badly and ends badly, but a good, solid hour in the middle is as charming as anything you'll see this holiday season.
The trailers slant this film as a family adventure despite the fact that it's really more of a traditional live action love story with a dash of animation accents.
Renee Zellweger's pretentious and unconvincing portrayal of Beatrix Potter doesn't help much to endear the viewer to the artist.
If a sorcerer could raise Benjamin Bunny and Flopsy Rabbit from the pages of Potter's books and transform them into human females, the creatures likely would favor Renee Zellweger.
The love story is beautifully constructed. There's some sentimentality here, but [director Chris] Noonan is careful not to take it too far and to avoid overplaying the audience's emotional chords.
Miss Potter is as seamless, comfortable and tidy as a Peter Rabbit story, all scones and biscuits, quietly punctuated by tolerable naughtiness.
Miss Potter vividly paints the picture of an inspirational woman who created lovely childhood memories of bedtime stories...
Watching this horrifically twee film is like having your face pushed into a bowl of pot-pourri for 90 minutes in a two-star B&B somewhere in Cumbria.
This is an earnest and rather sweet film, and one that will vanish from your mind as soon as the final credits roll. You could bring the children, who might like to know a little bit about the woman who created Peter Rabbit.
A straight-laced fairy tale-style biopic appropriate to the audience for which its message of inspiration is finely attuned.
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.
A delightful and enchanting biopicture about the famous children's book writer and illustrator whose love of the English Lake District made for a dramatic legacy.
Mostly, though, Miss Potter turns the solemn comedy of her books and illustrations into mere whimsy, animating Jemima Puddle-duck into cartoon life whenever Beatrix talks to her.
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.
Missing that childlike love for nature and animals that Beatrix must have had, and in turn, forgets what it's like to have an imagination.
Labors mightily to present world-famous children's author Beatrix Potter as a preternaturally free spirit.
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