Storyline
A retired businesswoman – who tries to control everything around her – decides to write her own obituary. A young journalist takes up the task of finding out the truth, and the result is a life-altering friendship.
Directors
Writers
Cast
Alanna Ubach, Philip Baker Hall, Jesse Burch, Marshall Bell, Amanda Seyfried, Shirley MacLaine, James Tupper, Anne Heche, Tom Everett Scott, Adina Porter, Joshua Harto, Todd Louiso, Natalija Nogulich, Joel Murray, Basil Hoffman, John Billingsley, Sarah Baker, Gedde Watanabe, Steven Culp, Thomas Sadoski, Millicent Martin, Chloe Wepper, Yvette Freeman, Nikki McCauley, Valeri Ross, AnnJewel Lee Dixon, Marcy Jarreau, Brooke Trantor, Bill Glass, Nicole Fazio, Juan Jose Dubon, J. Denise
Trailer
Reviews
60
Watching MacLaine’s Harriet embrace her life, after spending too much time rejecting it, leads The Last Word to a touching finish. MacLaine has something that shines through and elevates a film like this one. The movie is prefab indie whimsy, but she gives it an afterglow.
60
If you must make another entirely predictable comedy about an unapologetic old white curmudgeon who steamrolls all opposition, you can't do better than draft the redoubtable Shirley MacLaine to keep audiences in her barbed corner while we wait for her inevitable bittersweet humanization.
50
Offering predictably heartfelt messages about seizing the day, The Last Word can be very sweet and funny, but its lightness starts to feel cloying rather than ebullient.
50
What initially augured a spiky portrait of late-age restlessness recedes into a woefully generic case of shopworn cross-generational uplift, sprinkled with tired wisecracks.
50
Shirley MacLaine’s well-deserved reputation as a salty, snappy grand dame — forged from later-career work like "Terms of Endearment," "Steel Magnolias," "Postcards from the Edge," "Bernie", etc. — unfortunately precedes her in this sloppy, saccharine drama costarring Amanda Seyfried.
