Critic Reviews

• Rafer Guzman, Newsday

  Beresford directs without purpose or polish, and his mostly fine cast, which includes Kyle MacLachlan and Rosanna Arquette in bit parts, is wasted.

• Rex Reed, New York Observer

  Pop songs, beautiful bucolic scenery and the joy of watching Jane Fonda fizz in a fun role that looks like a no-brainer are elements that a skilled director like Australia's polished Bruce Beresford blends with perfection.

• Peter Rainer, Christian Science Monitor

  There's a great movie to be made about the survivors of Woodstock Nation and their children. But in order to make that movie, you first have to respect the ideals of that generation enough to at least give them their due.

• Amy Biancolli, San Francisco Chronicle

  There is no casting decision or character nuance or plot turn too obvious to indulge.

• Stephen Whitty, Newark Star-Ledger

  What's so funny about "Peace, Love & Misunderstanding"? Not enough.

• Connie Ogle, Miami Herald

  If nothing else, you must applaud Peace, Love & Misunderstanding for its cheery insistence that a lifetime of resentment can float away as easily as a helium-filled balloon.

• Witney Seibold, CraveOnline

  Somewhere Alison Bechdel is screaming.

• Emanuel Levy, EmanuelLevy.Com

  Three talented actresses, including Jane Fonda, are wasted in this disappointing serio-comedy.

• Ken Hanke, Mountain Xpress (Asheville, NC)

  About as surprising in its plot as a trip to McDonald's, but that doesn't keep it from being pretty satisfying on the cinematic comfort-food level.

• John Beifuss, Commercial Appeal (Memphis, TN)

  The once divisive 'Hanoi Jane' is now a harmless hippie dispensing homegrown marijuana and homilies about love and 'transformation' in this cornball, clichéd and predictable yet agreeable and entertaining movie.

• Christopher Lloyd, Sarasota Herald-Tribune

  For a movie that professes to teach us to get past our insecurities and think more freely, it does so with astonishingly conventional storytelling tropes.

• Rob Thomas, Capital Times (Madison, WI)

  Hippies are now charming old eccentrics who exist mainly to teach the rest of us to stop and smell (or smoke) the roses.

• Jeff Bayer, The Scorecard Review

  Jane Fonda's hippy offers nothing but a chance for Catherine Keener's uptight New Yorker to bicker with. What a flat film.

• S. Jhoanna Robledo, Common Sense Media

  Drug use and cliches mar unoriginal indie dramedy.

• Bob Bloom, Journal and Courier (Lafayette, IN)

  f Woodstock represented three days of love and peace, "Peace, Love & Misunderstanding" mostly takes up 96 minutes of your time, most who see will wish they could get back.

• Dan Lybarger, KC Active

  It's a bad sign when Jane Fonda has to work to pass for an old hippie.

• Annlee Ellingson, Paste Magazine

  Fonda, Keener and Olsen compose a dream team of multigenerational talent, but they, and this film, are underserved by characters in need of development and an idea in need of a story.

• Frank Swietek, One Guy's Opinion

  Good-natured, eager to please and harmless, but also contrived, trite and bland.

• Leonard Maltin, Leonard Maltin's Picks

  Not every movie is, or has to be, an Event. Sometimes all I ask of a film is that it offer a pleasant diversion for an hour and a half. That's exactly what I got from 'Peace, Love, & Misunderstanding'.

• Keith Cohen, Entertainment Spectrum

  The upbeat multi-generational slice-of-life narrative bears the appropriate tagline-"Life is a journey. Family is a trip." It is worth the price of admission to see the gifted Fonda grace the screen playing this free-wheeling, eccentric force of nature.

Read all 22 critic reviews