All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

Average User Score: 7 (5 sources)

Submit Movie Review

Review this film

Tell the world what you think of Marvin's Room

Your Score:

reset score

Write Your Review:
When writing your review, remember to keep the language clean.

Submit Review Cancel

supercin721

-1

Agree (0)

Disagree (0)

You've got an actor's powerhouse, featuring Streep, Keaton, and DiCaprio. All have proven that they can emote on screen, that they have the ability to take the words on a page and make you believe their struggle with a look, a sigh, whatever....
[+] Read Full Review

You've got an actor's powerhouse, featuring Streep, Keaton, and DiCaprio. All have proven that they can emote on screen, that they have the ability to take the words on a page and make you believe their struggle with a look, a sigh, whatever. They can at times be overrated but, in this film, they do make it work. There are awkward pauses, distressed looks, real laughs, real fear/desperation, real happiness. Two sisters fail to keep in touch for twenty years because one decides to stay with her ailing father and aunt while the other decides to live her own life. Neither is wrong or bad for their choices and each finds love, not romantic, with their parents and children but each has also found difficulties, frail elderlies and troublesome children. With the introduction of leukemia, the two are brought together again. Streep's character learns to be a little less hard, a bit less selfish (which in my opinion is a natural and normal attribute) and Keaton's a bit more forgiving. It's a sad tale but I suppose human. It's not my favorite film of any of the three but it's interesting nonetheless. I suppose the title is apropos if one realizes how central the father is to these two girls division and then reunion, how Streep's return to the room with medication is a symbol that she will take the baton and "grow" up, face life and her responsibilities. I would have liked to have seen Eve (Keaton's character) be the title but such but there it is.

[-] Minimize Review

Report Abuse

Posted feb 9, 2008 12:28 am pt

• [+] The Onion (A.V. Club)
  
  90
  Nonetheless, Marvin's Room is not only sharply written and well-acted, but it's also the rare sort of film that takes an honest and uncompromising look at death and dying.

  by Keith Phipps | Read Full Review »
• [+] Chicago Sun-Times
  
  88
  The famous faces make it difficult, at first, to sink into the story, but eventually we do; the characters become so convincing that even if we're aware of Keaton and Streep, it's as if these events are happening to them.

  by Roger Ebert | Read Full Review »
• [+] ReelViews
  
  88
  Yet, even on those occasions when the screenplay falters, the actors are there to take up the slack.

  by James Berardinelli | Read Full Review »
• [+] Dallas Observer
  
  80
  Inspirationalism wafts off the screen in little perfumed puffs.

  by Peter Rainer | Read Full Review »
• [+] Time
  
  80
  Marvin's Room, the 1991 Scott McPherson play, filmed by Jerry Zaks, is an old-fashioned weepie of noble mien with many bright moments and a superb cast.

  by Richard Corliss | Read Full Review »
• [+] Variety
  
  80
  The whole film is laced with shards of humor and irony, which proves helpful, considering the basically downbeat nature of the material.

  by Emanuel Levy | Read Full Review »
• [+] The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
  
  75
  Yet, about as often as Marvin's Room strikes a chord of emotional authenticity, it hits a fistful of false notes as well.

  by Liam Lacey | Read Full Review »
• [+] TV Guide
  
  75
  Tony Award-winning stage director Jerry Zaks' debut feature is a gentle, surprisingly funny film about dying that manages to tug a few heartstrings without the usual emotional manhandling.

  by Staff (not credited) | Read Full Review »
• [+] USA Today
  
  75
  Keaton doesn't stoop to bitter-spinster blather. Instead, the luminous vulnerability that served her well in such dramas as "Shoot the Moon" lights up this depressing, gallows-humored heart-tugger. [18 Dec 1996, Pg.01.D]

  by Susan Wloszczyna | Read Full Review »
• [+] Entertainment Weekly
  
  75
  The three are so full-bodied and so powerfully affecting that you're carried along on the pleasure of being in the presence of their extraordinary talent.

  by Lisa Schwarzbaum | Read Full Review »
• [+] San Francisco Chronicle
  
  75
  Any movie with Meryl Streep is an occasion, but when you add Diane Keaton, Robert De Niro, Leonardo DiCaprio, Hume Cronyn and Gwen Verdon, you've got an embarrassment of riches.

  by Edward Guthmann | Read Full Review »
• [+] San Francisco Examiner
  
  75
  Add to that a perfect cast and one's only complaint will be that this is, at heart, another tear-jerker about how good it is to love and be alive and all of that.

  by Barbara Shulgasser | Read Full Review »
• [+] Empire
  
  60
  Great actors do what they can in a simple and largely unaffecting story.

  by Bob McCabe | Read Full Review »
• [+] The New York Times
  
  60
  This film often fumbles, but it finally tugs at the heartstrings all the same.

  by Elvis Mitchell | Read Full Review »
• [+] Los Angeles Times
  
  60
  Though comedy is an intrinsic part of the play, director Zaks has not found a way to translate it effectively on screen.

  by Kenneth Turan | Read Full Review »