Eleanor the Great
September 25th, 2025
MOVIE: ELEANOR THE GREAT
STARRING: JUNE SQUIB, ERIN KELLYMAN, CHIWETEL EJIOFOR, JESSICA HECHT
DIRECTED BY: SCARLETT JOHANSSON
AMovieGuy.com’s RATING: 1 ½ STARS (Out of 4)
RATED: PG-13
RUN TIME: 98 MINUTES
One of the strangest films of 2025 has to be Eleanor the Great, Scarlett Johansson’s directorial debut. What begins as a seemingly gentle story about an elderly woman bonding with a college student takes a sharp and deeply uncomfortable turn- involving the Holocaust, a disturbing lie, and an attempt at redemption that feels unearned. While the film’s intentions may be sincere, and June Squibb is as charming as ever in the lead role, Eleanor the Great is far from what its title suggests.
We first meet Eleanor (Squibb) and her best friend Bessie (Rita Zohar) in a Florida retirement home, laughing and reminiscing about their lives. Their bond, built on shared experiences and the loss of their husbands, is sweet and touching. Bessie is a Holocaust survivor from Poland; Eleanor was married to a Jewish man from New York. When Bessie dies, Eleanor’s life is upended. She moves in with her daughter Lisa (Jessica Hecht) in New York, unsure of where she now belongs.
Lisa signs her up for singing classes at a local Jewish Community Center, but Eleanor accidentally stumbles into a support group for Holocaust survivors instead. Rather than leave, she impulsively adopts Bessie’s story as her own. Soon, she’s entangled in a growing web of deceit, especially after befriending Nina (Erin Kellyman), an NYU journalism student who wants to profile her. Nina’s father, Roger (Chiwetel Ejiofor, in a surprisingly thankless role), is a news anchor who also buys into the lie — and the stakes continue to rise.
You might think this could be a tender story about unlikely friendship, but it’s hard to get past the central premise: a woman pretending to be a Holocaust survivor. It’s a deeply troubling lie, and the film struggles to reckon with it in any meaningful way. Tory Kamen’s screenplay leans heavily on sentimentality, banking on Squibb’s innate warmth and exploiting the emotional weight of its subject matter. It wants desperately to make you cry: Holocaust trauma? Check. Elderly protagonist? Check. Dead friend? Check. Lonely student? Check. It feels like a checklist of emotional triggers rather than a story with authenticity.
If Johansson and her team were trying any harder, they’d throw in someone lost on 9/11 and a dying pet for good measure.
That’s not to say Eleanor the Great won’t resonate with some audiences. It may land with viewers who see it as a story about forgiveness and human connection. But like Dear Evan Hansen- another story about a manipulative lie masked as empathy- it leans on emotional manipulation without the saving grace of great music or a clear moral stance.
There is a compelling film to be made about intergenerational friendship or even about the complexities of grief and identity. But this isn’t it. The core of Eleanor the Great feels contrived, tone-deaf, and cold. A misguided attempt to wring meaning from something inherently offensive. You might walk in expecting to be moved. Instead, you’ll likely walk out asking: What exactly was this trying to say?
Because in the end, Eleanor isn’t so great after all.
1 ½ STARS
ELEANOR THE GREAT IS CURRENTLY PLAYING IN SELECT THEATERS.
Written by: Leo Brady
