42
Metascore
20 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 63Washington PostPat PaduaWashington PostPat PaduaDespite a story line that covers such fraught historical events as 9/11 and the Iraq War, the movie is too tidy to ever really feel like a living, breathing thing.
- 63Boston GlobeMark FeeneyBoston GlobeMark FeeneyJournal is Canedy’s story, but it’s Michael B. Jordan’s movie. Stalwart, quietly forceful, he seems positively . . . Denzelian.
- 50Movie NationRoger MooreMovie NationRoger MooreIt’s an ungainly film that loses focus time and again, drifting off to indulge its stars with extraneous scenes and badly-handled or simply unnecessary story threads.
- 50San Francisco ChronicleCary DarlingSan Francisco ChronicleCary DarlingA Journal for Jordan...is such a sweetly, well-intentioned film — one meant to bring a Christmastime lump in the throat in a year that gave us so many lumps of coal — that it feels churlish and downright Scrooge-like to point out its flaws. But the subject matter deserves better than this overlong melodrama spiked with occasional moments of welcome humor and pathos.
- 50The Associated PressMark KennedyThe Associated PressMark KennedyWashington earns his audience’s tears with an unrushed, unshowy style, letting an adult and very human relationship evolve on camera, skipping back and forth through years as it goes from love, birth, death and acceptance.
- 50Los Angeles TimesMichael OrdoñaLos Angeles TimesMichael OrdoñaThe picture’s too rosy to feel real. Its elements of posthumous, loving advice and inevitable tragedy make for good bones. But this portrait is too clean, too unquestioning, too accepting, to get to the marrow.
- 42IndieWireKate ErblandIndieWireKate ErblandNo, it’s not what you’re expecting, and what it is isn’t very good, either.
- 42The PlaylistNick AllenThe PlaylistNick AllenAs the overly long movie becomes about 130 minutes of his own propaganda, Washington romanticizes an ideal of man that has never actually existed, instead of a human being who did.
- 42The A.V. ClubIgnatiy VishnevetskyThe A.V. ClubIgnatiy VishnevetskyAdapted from a 2008 memoir by former New York Times writer and editor Dana Canedy, it trades in cloying sentimentality and romance, the gooey melodrama done no favors by Washington’s stiff, anonymous direction.
- 15TheWrapCarlos AguilarTheWrapCarlos AguilarCertainly among the worst films of the year considering the reputable talent involved, this inspirational drama stains Washington’s directorial filmography.