What we have is a film built around a character arc that we never really see play out, and while it is intermittently funny, it rings hollow as a weekly sitcom.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Sep 24, 2020

You could do better this weekend, but you could do a whole lot worse.

| May 5, 2020

You'll laugh. You'll cry. The Last Word speaks from the heart with the last word on life and legacy - Love.

| Oct 30, 2019

This is an absolute hoot and also offers inspiring insights on life, taking risks, and changing for the better.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Mar 1, 2019

Although the movie doesn't exactly have much of an original voice, it still has a very big heart.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Dec 20, 2018

It might take a little bit of extra effort to find The Last Word, but the cinematic experience and Maclaine's wonderful performance is well worth the journey.

| Dec 19, 2018

The Last Word is fairly generic movie where practically everything is preordained by the subgenre's convention.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Nov 1, 2018

"The Last Word" begins with a tart comic premise and then adds heapful after heapful of sugar until the sweetness is almost unbearable.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Dec 28, 2017

Each move is a telegraphed step away from the movie we started out liking.

| Original Score: C | Dec 27, 2017

The plot is not only predictable; it is forced, and lacks a single believable minute. MacLaine deserved so much more than this.

| Dec 22, 2017

Rather than spend undue attention on these elements, Pellington works his magic by tapping into the talents of his leads. Both MacLaine and Seyfried use their eyes and the act of watching to reveal who these women truly are.

| Original Score: B- | Dec 20, 2017

This has some sweet and funny moments but, at others, feels contrived, clunky and way too long.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Oct 6, 2017

It manages to avoid being too formulaic.

| Sep 12, 2017

Director Mark Pellington knows how to pace a scene, to trust his actors, and let character unfold. Writer Stuart Ross Fink writes interaction that captures the personality without overdoing the point.

| Aug 29, 2017

When a cranky older woman meets a plucky younger woman, it's a safe bet that formula will prevail.

| Aug 23, 2017

The Last Word, ostensibly about women journalists and cranky old women, is a movie that could've paid homage to them. Instead, it just made me miss them-even more than usual.

| Aug 22, 2017

This is a curious mix of The Blind Side, High Fidelity and A Christmas Carol.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jul 11, 2017

A bracingly cynical set-up is slightly betrayed by a treacly ending, but redeemed by the cast, especially the watchable Seyfried and MacLaine, who has the same glint in her eyes that she had in 1960 in The Apartment.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 11, 2017

The Last Word certainly has good intentions, but can't prevent its spiky lead character going too far with her acid tongue, or her unrealistic plans.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jul 9, 2017

With its off-the-mark proclamations about the Kinks and hi-fi nerd jargon, this feels like a screenplay written by someone who once read about music on Wikipedia but prefers not to listen to it.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jul 9, 2017