Eleanor the Great (2025)
Directed by: Scarlett Johansson
Premise: A nonagenarian (June Squibb) moves to New York City following the death of her closest friend. She meets a Holocaust survivor group and tells her friend’s life story as though it were her own.
What Works: Eleanor the Great has some outstanding performances by its core cast. For the past decade June Squibb has specialized in playing sassy grandmother characters as seen in Nebraska and Thelma. She’s doing that here as well but in Eleanor the Great Squibb is given a mix of dramatic and comedic material. The character makes some terrible choices that ought to be off-putting but Squibb makes Eleanor empathetic. This is a good example of how humor can make a character accessible but there is also a melancholy underneath the comedy that reveals Eleanor’s true feelings. Squibb is paired with Erin Kellyman as Nina, a journalism student profiling the Holocaust survivor group and intrigued by Eleanor’s story. Nina recently lost her mother and that bereavement informs Kellyman’s performance. Eleanor the Great is really about isolation and loneliness. Eleanor has lost her best friend and she’s left by herself in an unfamiliar city while Erin is unable to express her grief to anyone. The film dramatizes the way telling stories connects us with one another and it addresses some interesting questions about whose stories we tell and what rights we have to tell other people’s life stories for them.
What Doesn’t: The plotting of Eleanor the Great is extremely predictable. This is a little-white-lie premise and the movie works through the story formula without any deviations. The filmmakers do make Eleanor’s deceit understandable—she wants to fit into this support group and she is mourning her best friend who was a Holocaust survivor—but the film’s by-the-numbers handling of the drama trivializes the subject matter. Eleanor’s deceit is forgiven far too easily. She doesn’t have to do anything in reconciliation and the ending comes across uplifting but empty. The matter of loneliness is also dropped. Eleanor has been living with her daughter and grandson but they disappear from the story and the film does very little with their relationship. She ultimately goes to an assisted living community, a move she has been avoiding throughout the movie, but nothing comes of that. The filmmakers lose sight of what this story was really about, letting the formula dictate the drama instead of following the characters.
Bottom Line: Eleanor the Great has some good performances and an interesting idea but the film is too safe and predictable and it is devoid of consequences or stakes.
Episode: #1065 (September 21, 2025)