{"id":35930,"date":"2025-09-24T22:22:09","date_gmt":"2025-09-24T22:22:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/35930\/"},"modified":"2025-09-24T22:22:09","modified_gmt":"2025-09-24T22:22:09","slug":"eleanor-the-great-review-june-squibb-shines-in-johanssons-directorial-debut","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/35930\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Eleanor the Great’ review: June Squibb shines in Johansson’s directorial debut"},"content":{"rendered":"

There is a lovely story of friendship, grief and starting over at the heart of \u201cEleanor the Great.\u201d<\/a> The film, directed by Scarlett Johansson<\/a> in her feature debut, gets tangled in a plot contrivance that is, at best, unnecessary and at worst, loathsome.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the problem with the elevator pitch mentality, though. A story about a 90-something trying to make friends in a new city might sound a little too simple, a little too straightforward. What if she does so by pretending to be a Holocaust survivor<\/a>? I\u2019m not kidding.<\/p>\n

Eleanor is played by June Squibb<\/a> (the great). At 94-years-old, she has moved from Florida to New York after the death of her best friend and roommate Bessie (Rita Zohar). Her daughter, Lisa (Jessica Hecht), and grandson, Max (Will Price), have taken her into their small Manhattan apartment, but they only seem interested in getting Eleanor into an assisted living arrangement. Lisa especially treats her mother\u2019s presence like an inconvenience, a problem to fix, and Eleanor starts looking elsewhere for companionship.<\/p>\n

The thing is Eleanor had a great life in Florida, living with her platonic best friend in a little apartment. The script, Tory Kamen\u2019s first produced screenplay, smartly introduces this idyllic moment first. It is a distinct joy to watch the two nonagenarians go about their daily activities, from velcroing their shoes to doing their exercises on the beach.<\/p>\n

Squibb recently had a version of this in the delightful \u201cThelma,\u201d<\/a> but there she was alone, a widow determined to hold onto her independent living situation. Here, Bessie and Eleanor help each other, whether it\u2019s waking up on time, or standing up for the other at the local supermarket when their preferred brand of kosher pickles isn\u2019t on the shelf and the teenage employee dares to suggest that \u201call pickles taste the same.\u201d Then Bessie suddenly dies, and Eleanor is left with no choice but to start over.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s hard to make new friends anywhere, at any age, but perhaps even more so in drizzly, cold New York. When a friendly woman at the Jewish Community Center asks Eleanor if she\u2019s here for \u201cthe group,\u201d Eleanor doesn\u2019t question it. Yes, she says with a relieved smile. When it becomes clear that this group is for Holocaust survivors, she does try to leave, but everyone encourages her to stay and suddenly she\u2019s telling Bessie\u2019s story of losing her brother in Poland as her own. The script has already established Eleanor as a bit of a liar \u2014 but they\u2019re the small kinds, the white lies that, she says, aren\u2019t hurting anyone.<\/p>\n

This might have just been a one-time thing, but sitting in the room is an NYU journalism student, Nina (Erin Kellyman), who is moved to tears and wants to talk to Eleanor more. The two develop an unlikely, but incredibly sweet friendship. <\/p>\n

Nina has recently lost her mother and finds solace in this relationship. It\u2019s here where you can start to see how the rest of the movie is going to play out, how the lie will go on too long and be exposed at a terrible time, leading to inevitable feelings of betrayal and humiliation. And it is very, very hard to watch Squibb in distress. Rather than celebrate the performance you want to lash out at the script that put her in this situation in the first place. That may not be fair but it\u2019s also true.<\/p>\n

The story becomes less of a character study of the strange ways in which grief manifests and more about the escalating hijinks of a lie that takes on a wild life of its own. Soon Eleanor is speaking to Nina\u2019s journalism peers in an on-the-record, taped conversation, telling another of Bessie\u2019s stories. Then, Nina\u2019s distant father ( Chiwetel Ejiofor<\/a> ), a local news anchor, decides Eleanor\u2019s is a great human-interest story for his show.<\/p>\n

There is a thread about the merits of preserving memory, but it\u2019s introduced a little too late and too flimsily to justify all that came before it. Johansson directs the proceedings simply, like a classic New York character drama, allowing the performances to shine over the filmmaking, but who she is as a filmmaker remains to be seen. Squibb and Kellyman, both terrific, are the real reasons to seek out \u201cEleanor the Great.\u201d The film may trip over its own contrivances but their performances will leave you moved.<\/p>\n

\u201cEleanor the Great,\u201d a Sony Pictures Classics release in theaters Friday, is rated PG-13 by the Motion Picture Association for \u201csome language, thematic elements and suggestive references.\u201d Running time: 98 minutes. Two and a half stars out of four.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There is a lovely story of friendship, grief and starting over at the heart of \u201cEleanor the Great.\u201d…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":35931,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[458,29622,146,29619,29620,1210,85,46,29624,29617,29623,397,1886,29621,4347,29618],"class_list":["post-35930","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-chiwetel-ejiofor","tag-entertainment","tag-erin-kellyman","tag-film-reviews","tag-florida","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-jessica-hecht","tag-june-squibb","tag-lindsey-bahr","tag-movies","tag-new-york","tag-rita-zohar","tag-scarlett-johansson","tag-will-price"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35930","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35930"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35930\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35931"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35930"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35930"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35930"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}