She Said: Film critics mostly positive about MeToo drama

Critics have mostly praised the film She Said, starring Carey Mulligan and Zoe Kazan as the US journalists whose investigation into Harvey Weinstein helped spread the #MeToo movement.

The Guardian's Adrian Horton called it "a sensitive, emotionally astute film", which is "faithful to its source material".

It is based on Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey's 2019 book of the same name.

The Hollywood Reporter's Lovia Gyarkye called it a "solid dramatisation".

In October 2017, the New York Times published the reporters' article detailing sexual abuse allegations against the powerful Hollywood producer. It followed months of research, interviews and confidential discussions with actresses and former Weinstein employees.

Their book's full title is She Said: Breaking the Sexual Harassment Story That Helped Ignite a Movement.

Weinstein is currently serving 23 years in jail in New York after being convicted there of sexual assaults including rape, and another trial is under way in Los Angeles for 11 further charges of abuse.

In the Guardian, Horton said the film's scenes with the journalists' "non-celebrity sources" offered "the strongest case for a film adaptation, the emotional clarity text or real-life public interviews could not provide".

She wrote that the performances of Samantha Morton, Angela Yeoh and Jennifer Ehle, who play Weinstein's former employees, were a "gut punch".

The Hollywood Reporter added that director Maria Schrader's film sensitively portrayed "the lengths the reporters went to in order to expose one of the most harrowing cases of workplace abuse, power and coercion in memory".

But writing in the Independent, Amanda Whiting called the film a "slow-paced slog" through the Weinstein investigation, but added that Kazan gave its "standout performance, delicate and affecting".

Vanity Fair's Richard Lawson also praised Morton and Ehle, calling them "acting standouts".

"Seeing these women, decades after their trauma but still living, with sad resignation, in its aftermath, gives poignant testament to the long-lasting effect of Weinstein's predation," he said.

He added he would have liked to have seen more of the reporters' "diligent work", but that "if that storytelling decision was made so there was more room for the intimate human factor, then it was an understandable one".

Owen Gleiberman wrote in Variety: "Following the template of All the President's Men and Spotlight, She Said is a tense, fraught, and absorbing movie, one that sticks intriguingly close to the nuts and bolts of what reporters do."

However, he said after its "superb first hour" it "doesn't build to an electrifying payoff in quite the way you want it to".

Deadline's Valerie Complex praised Mulligan for being "strong and confident" in her role, while calling Kazan "the heart of the film".

The two senior female reporters and female editor "balance the record of, say, all The Presidents Men or Spotlight", according to Screen Daily's Fionnuala Halligan. She called the film a "rock-solid investigative drama about and told by women".

Writing in The Wrap, Fran Hoepfner said: "It's not a particularly artful film, with one too many exterior shots of The New York Times' office and a rote score by Nicholas Brittell used to emphasize that what's happening is important, but it's tough not to get increasingly invested in Kantor and Twohey's work.

"The two travelled near and far, sacrificing time with their families, in order to get this story out here."

But Nick Schager in The Daily Beast added that it was a "frustratingly dull drama", calling it "an earnest and well-intentioned dramatisation of Kantor and Twohey's efforts", but that the film was "wholly inert, and no more evocative than the reportage upon which it's based".