50
Metascore
18 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 67The PlaylistJack KingThe PlaylistJack KingWhile My Salinger Year is not always successful in the larger debate it tries to have around how we can define authorship, and how the commercialization of writing infringes upon creativity, the film’s central narrative following Joanna’s conflicting aspirations as a writer largely succeeds.
- 58IndieWireEric KohnIndieWireEric KohnMy Salinger Year often trips on the self-serious nature of its premise, and struggles with an antiquated quality out of sync with its timeline, as if trapped between the character’s genuine experiences and her idealized vision of a literary world that doesn’t really exist.
- 55The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Barry HertzThe Globe and Mail (Toronto)Barry HertzAfter watching the film twice in quick succession – a futile attempt at catching a glimpse of what usually makes a Falardeau film so immensely watchable (see the Quebecois filmmaker’s Monsieur Lazhar, The Good Lie, My Internship in Canada and Chuck) – My Salinger Year ultimately lands as a mere footnote.
- 50The Hollywood ReporterBoyd van HoeijThe Hollywood ReporterBoyd van HoeijThe main issue with the film's screenplay, written by the director, is that it is trying to cover too much ground and yet be tonally light on its feet.
- 50San Francisco ChronicleDavid LewisSan Francisco ChronicleDavid LewisMy Salinger Year, which is basically The Devil Wears Prada set in the literary world, is a film that feels like it’s ready to take off at any moment, but stalls every time it tries to do anything.
- 40VarietyPeter DebrugeVarietyPeter DebrugeThe movie doesn’t show a complex enough representation of either adult life or the New York literary world to offer much depth to grownups (it’s far more engaged with Joanna’s romantic life and dream sequences set at the Waldorf Astoria), which means that My Salinger Year must have been intended to inspire young women for whom 1995 seems like the ancient past.
- 38Slant MagazineWes GreeneSlant MagazineWes GreeneThe film fails to effectively seize on how its main character’s life and work experiences have affected her as a person and artist.
- 20The GuardianPeter BradshawThe GuardianPeter Bradshaw[A] bafflingly insipid, zestless, derivative film.