Miss Potter

"This much sweetness and light in a movie is all very well. But there's a reason that recipes for cake and cookies call for a pinch of salt. In Miss Potter, there is only a grain or two -- not enough to dilute the sugary overload. The film is the cinematic equivalent of a delicate English tea cake whose substance is buried under too many layers of icing..."

"The problem confronting writer Richard Maltby Jr. and director Chris Noonan is that Potter lived a fairly uneventful life once you remove her success as an author..."

"A very beautiful thing. The film does justice to a singular imagination, a mind that conjured lovely, benign images that have spoken to people for more than 100 years. It presents both worlds Beatrix Potter inhabited, turn of the century England and the colorful enchantment inside her mind, while specifically showing -- and this is important -- how such an artist, living in two realities at once, navigated through life..."

"A charming and gentle film, but full of dramatic licence and not terribly revealing. It touches on the well-known aspects of Potter's life, and is a portrait of the woman fans would like to imagine created these charming tales..."

"Pitched awkwardly -- neither for children nor cool young adults -- it's very sweet, very nice and just the thing for a girlie matinée with mum and nan..."

"Yes, there's a kiss in the steam of a departing train, but somehow this film avoids being too schmaltzy. Maybe it's the period setting, the gorgeous landscapes or the fact that poor Beatrix seems stuck in a bad-hair day that lasts a lifetime, but there's a certain charm to this film that transcends its sometimes too-gently-told content..."

"The film is a guaranteed tearjerker, but more than that, an uplifting tribute to a single woman's quest for independence that would surely make Bridget Jones blush..."