We don't so much root for Spacek as sit back and watch her tell us what happened. She's as much in control of this film as is her director.

| Apr 7, 2022

Fortunately, Spacek and Jones are able to make up for the superficiality of the script. Spacek, who does all her own singing in a clear voice that is, at times, more affecting than that of Lynn herself, does one of her magical character transformations.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Apr 7, 2022

The first part of the film is by far the most moving, and is almost continually captivating in terms of scenarios and backwoods settings.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Apr 7, 2022

Cliches are like tarnished silver. Remove the accumulated dross and what is still precious will emerge. Coal Miner’s Daughter does precisely that. It takes the rags-to-riches cliche and restores it to something beautiful to behold.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Apr 7, 2022

Despite a wonderful and convincing performance from Sissy Spacek, Coal Miner's Daughter falls back on the teary conventions of a heroine who can't pay the price of success... Such thinking has damaged an otherwise excellent movie.

| Apr 7, 2022

The film, unified and often transformed by a superb performance from Sissy Spacek and a very good one from Tommy Lee Jones, survives this change of gear and even builds upon it.

| Apr 7, 2022

Despite its simplicities, Coal Miner's Daughter has roots that go into soil which other pop-star biopics hardly scratch in their haste to hit the big times and the bright lights.

| Apr 7, 2022

It avoids the saccharine pitfalls that surround a life story which is so like the fan ragazine rags to riches clap trap and it could make a very unfair caricature.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Apr 7, 2022

The overall effect of the film is cloying and unsatisfactory. It paints a chocolate-box picture of poverty and struggle, in which it only takes talent and will-power to pass from a loving shanty to a lovely mansion.

| Apr 7, 2022

All pop stars, apparently, have enjoyed the same life story, from rags to road tours to record flogging to riches to drugs to breakdown. The Coal Miner's Daughter repeats it, telling how A Star Is Born to the Grand Ole Opry.

| Apr 7, 2022

Within the old backstage formula, Coal Miner's Daughter has a lot of life and truth.

| Apr 7, 2022

Like Loretta Lynn's music, the characters of Coal Miner's Daughter stay in the mind long after the drama that contains them runs out.

| Apr 7, 2022

There's a slick, plastic feeling to most Hollywood biographies, especially when the subject is still living, and while there are a lot of entertainment values to Coal Miner's Daughter, the plastic feeling remains.

| Apr 7, 2022

The appeal of Coal Miner's Daughter lies basically in its naturalness and, along with that, its honesty. And, unlike most film biographies of entertainers, this one is, indeed, entertaining.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Apr 6, 2022

It's a remarkable film, a slice of Americana seen through the compassionate, unprejudiced eyes of English director Michael Apted.

| Apr 6, 2022

Wears thin as it plays on, devolving into familiar showbiz sentimentality.

| Apr 2, 2020

Coal Miner's Daughter, however, belongs to Sissy Spacek, and in a smaller way to Beverly D'Angelo, who plays Patsy Cline, Loretta's friend and erstwhile country-music 'rival'. Both sing their hearts out with infectious application.

| Jan 16, 2020

The musical biography by now has a pattern as fixed as a traditional 12-bar blues. It is just that some blues are better than others, and so are some musical biographies. Coal Miner's Daughter... is on of the best of its kinds.

| Jun 28, 2019

Coal Miner's Daughter is most interesting when it's conveying the bleak, dreary Kentucky landscape that formed Lynn's childhood. It's least interesting when it's portraying the agonies of show-business success.

| Apr 27, 2018

A thoughtful, endearing film charting the life of singer Loretta Lynn from the depths of poverty in rural Kentucky to her eventual rise to the title of 'queen of country music'.

| Oct 18, 2008