The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie Reviews
January 24, 2020
Miss [Maggie] Smith's performance is in the best English tradition of such elocutionary actresses as Beatrice Lilly and Edith Evans.
July 23, 2019
In her role, Maggie Smith doesn't convince. She sounds theatrical and artificial, especially in front of her students. [Full Review in Spanish]
June 26, 2019
Growing up and leaving our childhoods behind is such a furious tangle of triumph and heartbreak, and this seemingly innocuous story about a capricious teacher and her doting girls captures it all so succinctly, and so beautifully.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4.5/5
March 10, 2011
As is so often the case, you can't help thinking that Oscar voters are easily impressed. Watching the film today, Maggie Smith's flamboyant acting looks awfully hammy,
January 1, 2011
Maggie Smith deservedly won the 1969 Best Actress Oscar for playing a charismatic, authoritarian teacher in a Scottish girls school in the early 1930s.
Full Review
| Original Score: B+
June 12, 2008
Maggie Smith's tour-de-force performance as a school-teacher slipping into spinsterhood is one of several notable achievements in this sentimental and macabre personal tragedy.
June 24, 2006
Maggie Smith is handed a part in the eccentric, trite, purposeful and finally pathetic Jean Brodie which allows her to play to all her considerable strengths.
July 2, 2005
Original Score: 3/5
June 19, 2005
Original Score: 3/5
June 12, 2005
Original Score: 3/5
March 8, 2005
Original Score: 5/5
July 21, 2004
...stripped of [star Maggie Smith's] presence, there's no doubt that the film would be a complete bore.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
July 13, 2004
Original Score: 4/5
April 11, 2004
Smith is excellent -- and won an Oscar for the role -- helping to elevate the film above what can often be a somewhat stuffy character study.
Original Score: 3.5/5
March 12, 2004
Original Score: 4/5
August 15, 2003
Some memorable performances don't quite make Jean Brodie feel like real cinema.
Original Score: 3/5
December 5, 2002
Original Score: 4/5
September 2, 2002
Original Score: 3/5
January 1, 2000
Maggie Smith in one of those technically stunning, emotionally distant performances that the British are so damn good at.