Miss Potter

Directed by Chris Noonan, Miss Potter follows Renée Zellweger’s Beatrix Potter as she becomes a famed children’s author and eventually falls for a handsome publisher (Ewan McGregor’s Norman Warne). Filmmaker Noonan, armed with a script by Richard Maltby Jr., delivers a familiar yet predominantly watchable drama that benefits from its appealing performances and compelling storyline, as the movie, in terms of the former, boasts terrific work from both Zellweger and McGregor that’s heightened by their palpable chemistry together – which, in turn, makes it easy enough to overlook the decidedly less-than-fresh bent of Noonan’s approach to the material (ie the picture, for the most part, comes off as a fairly run-of-the-mill 18th century romance). And while it’s ultimately clear that the picture fares best in its briskly-paced (and surprisingly eventful) opening hour, with the emphasis on Potter’s efforts at getting her career off the ground certainly as appealing and intriguing as one might’ve hoped, Miss Potter admittedly does fizzle out slightly in a final third that’s simply unable to pack the engaging punch of everything preceding it (ie the absence of a key character is felt rather keenly, ultimately) – with the end result an entertaining (albeit somewhat forgettable) piece of work that resembles an off-brand Jane Austen tale more than anything else (which isn’t necessarily a bad thing).

*** out of ****