Released through Sky Cinema, the film follows the story of Roald Dahl and his marriage to Patricia Neal. Here’s what critics have had to say about it…
The Guardian: ** “There is no real howl of pain of the kind that we had in, say in the 1993 movie, Shadowlands about the personal grief of CS Lewis. To Olivia is cushioned by its own carefully managed good taste.”
The Independent: *** “True, grief is universal – but To Olivia never embraces the fact that stories draw their power from specificity. It’s what makes them feel real.”
Empire: *** “with a first-base script and a reliance on overly familiar beats (the parent packing up the child’s room, the metaphor involving birds), this sometimes skims the surface of its characters’ lives. But the moments that do connect — largely involving Olivia herself — are undeniably moving.”
The Telegraph: ** “By reshuffling reality and inventing timelines, this drama about the writer’s relationship with his wife shamelessly cooks the books.”
Evening Standard: ** “Hugh Bonneville (Dahl) and Keeley Hawes (Neal) are extremely watchable. They’re heavily hampered, however, by a whimsical script that often feels like propaganda for the problematic Dahl brand (last year his family quietly published a statement apologising for the ‘lasting and understandable hurt’ caused by his anti-semitism).”
Culture Whisper: ** “The film shows the wave of grief that torrents over the family, with Roald retreating and locking the emotion tight inside – to Patricia’s frustration. There’s a commendable effort to examine her side and struggles, raising two kids while her husband keeps his distance.”
The Daily Mail: ** “Do any reading up on Tessa’s wretched childhood or Roald’s vicious anti-Semitism and it becomes clear that the casting, nearly as much as the script and direction, soft-soaps a story that should really feel like a hard, painful scrub.”
The Arts Desk: ** “He of all challenging and complex men, with a temperament to match, seems an odd subject for the sort of weightless, paint-by-numbers biopic that would be hard-pressed to muster much attention even as TV filler on a particularly dead night.”
City AM: “Like 2019’s Tolkein and 2017’s Rebel In The Rye, To Olivia suffers from the fact that it can be difficult to make the life of a writer seem cinematic. Despite the best efforts of those involved, the slight storyline doesn’t reflect the exciting work of the man it portrays.”
Express: *** “However, the script is far too pointed in its allusions to Roald’s writing (he meets an Augustus who likes peaches before buying some gobstoppers and hiding his daughter’s toy, Matilda) and does not delve deep enough into the pain of their predicament.”
iNews: *** “What elevates To Olivia above other mediocre biopics is the fact that the little girl’s death should now be so avoidable. Olivia died of encephalitis caused by measles. The measles vaccine was developed just a year later and Dahl became a lifelong vaccinations advocate. Only a discreet end-credits note remarks on this, but it’s impossible to watch the film without thinking of what might have been, and precisely what is at risk now.”
To Olivia is available to watch through Sky Cinema now.