Nebraska (2013)
Average Rating: 7.4/10
Reviews Counted: 21
Fresh: 17 | Rotten: 4
No consensus yet.
Average Rating: 6.9/10
Critic Reviews: 7
Fresh: 5 | Rotten: 2
No consensus yet.
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User Ratings: 642
Movie Info
Director Alexander Payne (Sideways, The Descendants) takes the helm for this black and white road trip drama starring Bruce Dern as a tempestuous Missouri father who's convinced he's won a million dollar magazine sweepstakes, and Will Forte as the son who grudgingly agrees to drive him to Nebraska to claim his winnings. Bob Odenkirk and Stacy Keach costar. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi
Nov 15, 2013 Limited
Paramount Pictures
- Official Site
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All Critics (21) | Top Critics (7) | Fresh (17) | Rotten (4)
There's a poignant suggestion of a modern-day Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, and it works in a thoughtfully wrought film that feels more built to last than Payne's last feature, The Descendants.
Top CriticA whimsical minor addition to the Payne canon.
A wistful ode to small-town Midwestern life and the quixotic dreams of stubborn old men.
A bittersweet father-son road trip through an emotionally economically parched homeland.
Nebraska has much merit, but for Payne it is a little underwhelming.
There's little heart in Payne's heartland.
a showcase opportunity for national treasure Bruce Dern.
One of Payne's better films.
A tangle of film school clichés, rampant condescension and woe-is-me, middle-aged-white-guy-problems so juvenile it would blot even a first-time filmmaker's copybook.
A straightforward road trip with an embracing sense of melancholia
The critical consensus from Cannes about Nebraska is that it's "minor Payne." I think it might be more accurate to call it a transitional film, with one foot in his old techniques and one tentatively standing in new ones.
All I can tell you for certain is that Nebraska got to me.
Payne's latest considers the notion of legacy with quietly heart-wrenching attention to detail, and is one of his sweetest yet most unsentimental films to date.
Essentially this movie is about giving an old man his dignity, which is found through letting him play out an embarrassing misunderstanding, letting someone figure that out for themselves is more respectful than "saving" them from it by stepping in.
Payne directs the film in a relatively uncluttered manner, ensuring the film plays out as a slowly unravelling elegant narrative.
Really, Nebraska is a small-scale quixotic adventure about the importance of dreams, no matter how pie-eyed, in which the outlined flaws could all be forgiven, if it just went somewhere a bit more surprising.
Payne can't seem to decide if he's coddling these old-school Midwesterners for their rudely rustic values or sneering at the sheer narrowness of their worldview.
This is a resounding return to form for Payne: there are moments that recall his earlier road movies About Schmidt and Sideways, but it has a wistful, shuffling, grizzly-bearish rhythm all of its own.
A thoroughly sweet and charming movie, and a reminder of Dern's quality as an actor.
Audience Reviews for Nebraska
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| Bruce Dern rules | 10 days ago | 2 |
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