Where’d you Go Bernadette is not just the title of the film: it’s also the question it leaves the audience with. Where did the plot go? Where did all of those promising elements run away to?

| Original Score: 2/5 | Sep 21, 2024

Linklater’s film is a loose adaptation of the best-selling novel of the same name. Fans of the novel might take exception to how loose. Chief among the changes: Bernadette is around an awful lot for a story about someone who disappears.

| Jul 19, 2023

I even liked its messiness. That may be a weird compliment, but this is a weird movie, and I guess I like that about it too.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 21, 2022

Cate Blanchett transforms what read on the page as “kooky-neurotic-but-loving-mom” into an abrasively self-pitying, invective-spewing depressive...

| Aug 18, 2022

Bernadette is so relatable thanks to Blanchett.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 16, 2022

Blanchett makes this character feel layered and engaging and delivers another great performance that she can add to her filmography.

| Original Score: 7/10 | Jun 4, 2022

Despite my affection for Linklaters work, the persistent need to support mid-budget films at the cinema, and the appeal of its luminous star, Blanchett, that beacon of class and talent, none of it is enough to recommend.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Feb 26, 2022

While the film has value as a springboard for conversations about something everyone has to deal with - namely, failure - it doesn't quite live up to the quality of some of Linklater's other work.

| Aug 12, 2021

A moving actor's portrait of an artist's real anguish, hidden and gift-wrapped within a Gap ad that is Bernadette's scenery and style.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 31, 2021

Bernadette's antics and adventures mix a lot of talk with impressive visuals, worth watching to find answers about destinations, both physical and mental.

| Jul 23, 2021

Linklater's humane liberalism has a certain value as an antidote to the brutality and foulness of official political life and culture, but we live in times more turbulent and perilous than the Drake Passage.

| Feb 10, 2021

Finds touching moments in the story of a woman who had to get lost to find herself.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 31, 2021

The film adaption loses the quick, flirty pace the book so artfully employs and chooses instead on safe, but laborious storytelling that, despite its many good performances, may not keep you awake until the credits roll.

| Jan 28, 2021

This misguided comedy gets off to a strong start and then self-destructs in record time as what was initially charming soon becomes grating and irritating.

| Original Score: 2.5/4.0 | Nov 21, 2020

Where'd You Go, Bernadette might lure in fans of the book but as someone coming to the material with no background knowledge, I was disappointed.

| Original Score: C+ | Aug 31, 2020

I'm happy to report that Where'd You Go, Bernadette is a pretty well assembled and often very well written film, with a towering performance from Blanchett at its heart.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Jul 31, 2020

Fans of the novel may take umbrage at the considerable narrative streamlining Linklater and his co-writers have applied to the film's third act, but the changes make for a thrilling and satisfying resolution.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 29, 2020

It isn't that Linklater has delivered a disaster, but there's an irascible feeling that someone -- nay, almost everyone -- behind the scenes was phoning it in.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jul 28, 2020

Even Blanchett's performance is not enough for the drama to have a cohesive solution. In the end it is somewhat conventional. It's a minor Linklater movie. [Full review in Spanish]

| Original Score: 6/10 | Jul 27, 2020

It's easy to see why Cate Blanchett was drawn to such a project - especially with Richard Linklater... But his film adaptation of Maria Semple's satirical novel about motherhood and ambition is uncharacteristically ham-fisted.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Jul 27, 2020