Review Roundup: THE GLORIAS, Directed by Julie Taymor

"The Glorias" is coming! The film is now available to stream on Amazon Prime Video.

Journalist, fighter, and feminist Gloria Steinem is an indelible icon known for her world-shaping activism, guidance of the revolutionary women's movement, and writing that has impacted generations. In this nontraditional biopic, Julie Taymor crafts a complex tapestry of one of the most inspirational and legendary figures of modern history, based on Steinem's own memoir My Life on the Road. The Glorias (Julianne Moore, Alicia Vikander, Lulu Wilson, Ryan Keira Armstrong) traces Steinem's influential journey to prominence-from her time in India as a young woman, to the founding of Ms. magazine in New York, to her role in the rise of the women's rights movement in the 1960s, to the historic 1977 National Women's Conference and beyond.

Playwright Sarah Ruhl wrote the script.

The Glorias includes a number of iconic women who made profound contributions to the women's movement, including Dorothy Pitman Hughes (Janelle Monáe), Flo Kennedy (Lorraine Toussaint), Bella Abzug (Bette Midler), Dolores Huerta (Monica Sanchez) and Wilma Mankiller (Kimberly Guerrero).

The critics have spoken...

John Anderson, Wall Street Journal: "American women owe a debt to Gloria Steinem. Julie Taymor owes her an apology. "The Glorias," an overlong, unfocused and distractingly stylized take on Ms. Steinem's life, commits various sins of self-indulgence."

Lindsey Bahr, AP: "This being a Taymor production, you can expect a few genuinely trippy sequences that come out of nowhere. But these maximalist sequences DON'T detract from the overall film (they DON'T add much either, but you can't help but appreciate them nonetheless)."

Owen Gleiberman, Variety: "The film is acted with great flair and emotional precision, and it's been staged by Taymor with vividly detailed historical flavor, yet it tells Steinem's story in a way that's more wide than deep."

Brian Lowry, CNN: "'The Glorias' acknowledges Steinem's sweeping influence with the idea that it takes more than one actor to bring her to life. Yet the result is a movie that, despite its earnest intentions and some stirring moments, ultimately doesn't feel equal to its subject."

Dan Rubins, Slant: "'The Glorias' loses its balance only when Steinem's life rushes up against history, the film's kaleidoscopic momentum tripping toward a future that hasn't been written yet. As the road trip whirls toward 2020, Taymor's overreliance on documentary footage sometimes jars with the usual deliberateness of her visual storytelling."

Pete Hammond, Deadline: "Julie Taymor is a director who always swings for the fences, whether a splendid biopic of Frida Khalo or a vivid reimagining of The Lion King for Broadway. Changing Prospero from male to female in her adaptation of Shakespeare's The Tempest is another example, if not quite as successful, but now her unconventional and highly watchable biopic of feminist icon Gloria Steinem just adds to the fascinating filmography she has been building."

Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle: "Most biographies, like most biographical films, are at their most compelling when depicting the origins and emergence of their subject. Such is the case here. Steinem's life seems to have been unusual from the beginning."

Sarah Tai-Black, The Globe and Mail: "'The Glorias' is clearly aware of its timing within our current world and is quick to outline Steinem's proximities with what would have then been referred to as "minority groups." Where it fails, however, is in its decisions to gloss over these moments (and others) with an eye that is all too simplistic."

K. Austin Collins, Rolling Stone: "The strange thing is that for all its tricks - even that odd detour through The Wizard of Oz Taymor manages to serve us midway through - The Glorias still falls prey to the problem of making a movie out of a life far too vast for a movie. Which is to say, a deeply political life."

Adrian Horton, The Guardian: "Why edit half the scene in color, half in black and white, like the early iPhoto effects of the mid-2000s? There doesn't seem to be a reason other than to gesture at depth - one of many baffling artistic choices that turn a nearly two-and-a-half-hour film on what should be a fascinating, mettlesome, complicated character study into an uneven, trite and at times laughably shoddy mess."

Tomris Laffly, RogerEbert.com: "Taymor's film is a touch overlong and slightly overwhelming in its creative components that sometimes feel random. Still, "The Glorias" manages to hit a timely nerve, even though it doesn't always work."

The Hollywood Reporter: "Threaded throughout with stylistic extravagances that can feel intrusive, the film is most exciting when its dramatic scenes are intercut with archival footage to celebrate inspirational milestones in the history of women's rights in this country."

Jennifer Szalai, The New York Times: "Under the direction of Julie Taymor, "The Glorias" never truly engages with this idea, skating along the contours of a long life that's so eventful and accomplished that the end result comes across like a two-plus hour, slickly produced highlight reel."

Kate Erbland, IndieWire: "Filmmaker Julie Taymor has never operated within conventional parameters, but then again, neither has her latest cinematic subject, feminist icon and political firebrand Gloria Steinem. Taymor, who has only dipped into biopics once before, with the similarly creative "Frida," knows that life doesn't move in a straight line, which could have scared her off from adapting Steinem's road-trip autobiography. But the road to becoming "Gloria Steinem" was winding, and the best parts of the wonderfully inventive "The Glorias" are when Taymor takes her various eponymous Glorias on some artful detours. Steinem, fortunately, has many of them to offer."

Katie Walsh, The LA Times: "The Glorias" is long but thorough, and as Taymor carefully details Steinem's rise as the face of the women's movement, the filmmaker also draws out the important themes that mark Steinem's life.

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Watch the film's trailer here:

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