A stunning profile of a complex person, ‘Jane Fonda In Five Acts’ excels at capturing all the intricacies that make us who we are and inspires us to keep working on our own unfinished self-portraits.

| Feb 13, 2024

Brother Peter and oldest daughter Vanessa Vadim are conspicuously missing from the interviews, but otherwise, Jane Fonda in Five Acts is a frank and fascinating look at the complicated life and career of an extraordinary woman.

| Oct 12, 2021

For Jane Fonda fans, this documentary is an in-depth look inside her life, although like any autobiography, it lacks outside perspective. It is the life of Jane Fonda as Jane Fonda would tell it.

| Oct 12, 2021

Jane Fonda in Five Acts is a closeup and very personal biodoc in which the actress, interviewed on camera, traces her own evolution as artist, activist and feminist through the various phases...

| Oct 12, 2021

Lacy's camera captures one of America's most well-known women at both her proudest and her most vulnerable, and the end result is sympathetic and satisfying.

| Oct 12, 2021

The journey, despite having already been essayed in her 2005 bestselling memoir My Life So Far, with the assistance of archival footage, is a fascinating if ambivalent one.

| Jun 1, 2020

Pictures often speak louder than words, and filmmaker Susan Lacy does a masterful job of summing up this amazing female icon with her documentary, Jane Fonda in Five Acts.

| Jan 23, 2020

Her mug shot may be used as the central marketing hook, but there was so much more to Fonda than just "Hanoi Jane" and I liked that Five Acts gave equal weight to all of her work both on and off screen.

| Original Score: B+ | Dec 24, 2018

She's a legend, sure. But now she's not Henry's daughter, or Roger/Tom/Ted's wife, or Bree Daniels. She's just Jane, the doc suggests, plain old Jane. It only took decades to get there.

| Dec 20, 2018

Fonda is so solid throughout the documentary that an enthusiastic reference to a prophetic psychic reading sticks out as a flighty departure.

| Original Score: A | Dec 14, 2018

Modern documentaries have led us to expect more rigour in their storytelling but this, despite its willingness to touch on family discord and so on, keeps a respectful distance that ultimately frustrates.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Nov 6, 2018

At age 80, Jane Fonda is still going strong. Here's to act number six!

| Original Score: 5/5 | Oct 25, 2018

This HBO production is too long. And I found some of the modern day interviews somewhat self-serving and filled with inconsistencies. On the other hand, who among us can look back on long lives with total emotional and factual recall?

| Oct 15, 2018

Two hours of your time very well spent.

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Oct 5, 2018

The emotional and often raw documentary Jane Fonda in Five Acts, presents a woman of contradictions, an activist who ended a marriage to fulfill her need to make the world a better place

| Oct 2, 2018

This a film that celebrates change and transformation; the power that comes from our ability to learn from our mistakes and to grow. Like the woman at the centre of it all, it's inspirational.

| Sep 29, 2018

What [the film] is throughout is tender, more a watercolour than an oil, which ultimately paints its subject in detail but in tender shades.

| Sep 28, 2018

The poignancy of Fonda's point of view on the various topics adds tremendously to the unfolding of this excellent film. Fonda makes no excuses saying, "I am what I am."

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Sep 27, 2018

As seen through Lacy's compassionate lens, the Jane Fonda who lays bare her life in Five Acts is introspective and affable, confident yet forthcoming about her flaws and failures.

| Sep 25, 2018

It's hard to overstate the pleasures of this film or, more precisely, this encounter with its subject.

| Sep 24, 2018