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Peace, Love & Misunderstanding

Play trailer Poster for Peace, Love & Misunderstanding R 2012 1h 36m Comedy Drama Romance Play Trailer Watchlist
Watchlist Tomatometer Popcornmeter
30% Tomatometer 69 Reviews 62% Popcornmeter 5,000+ Ratings
With her divorce looming, a lawyer (Catherine Keener) ventures to upstate New York with her children in tow to visit her hippie mother (Jane Fonda), whom she hasn't seen in 20 years.

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Peace, Love & Misunderstanding

Peace, Love & Misunderstanding

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Critics Consensus

Peace, Love, & Misunderstanding produces many unintentional laughs with its absurdly contrived plot and cheery insistence that everything is just super.

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Critics Reviews

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Monica Castillo Dig Boston 06/18/2012
The lighting was so off in this movie that bright patches of sunlight made me squint and dark nighttime scenes lost some character's facial features. Go to Full Review
Rafer Guzman Newsday 06/15/2012
0.5/4
Beresford directs without purpose or polish, and his mostly fine cast, which includes Kyle MacLachlan and Rosanna Arquette in bit parts, is wasted. Go to Full Review
Rex Reed Observer 06/14/2012
3/4
Pop songs, beautiful bucolic scenery and the joy of watching Jane Fonda fizz in a fun role that looks like a no-brainer are elements that a skilled director like Australia's polished Bruce Beresford blends with perfection. Go to Full Review
Richard Propes TheIndependentCritic.com 09/19/2020
2.5/4.0
The film only partially lives up to its promise. Go to Full Review
Kelly Jane Torrance Washington Examiner 01/03/2019
2.5/4
Keener is a great character actress, while Olsen is destined to become one. Go to Full Review
Tara Thorne The Coast (Halifax, Nova Scotia) 11/16/2018
This pleasant enough straight-to-DVD comedy stars Catherine Keener as an uptight lawyer who takes her kids (one is Elizabeth Olsen) to her Mom's for the summer. Go to Full Review
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Audience Reviews

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Jacqueline B Jun 5 Agreed, the movie is kinda smaltzy and a little predictable, however it is also confronting in a number of ways if you take the time to look. For example - it brings awareness to how often we can make assumptions and slime people with our attitudes because of our own self righteousness. I also thought the small vid at the end was really powerful (in fact, the whole movie is an explanation of this piece), and highlighted the small and large 'violences' we perpetrate on each other day to day. This small part of the movie really made me look at myself - so discuss lighting if needed, but I think that most seem to be missing what this movie had to say... I could go on, but I'll let you come to your own understanding around what this might be. See more 08/29/2021 The movie reminded me of a cartoon about a well-dressed Yuppie walking from his disappointed hippie parents' home. Indeed, that is actually the premise of the movie, about a woman lawyer finding her husband wanting to divorce her, so she takes her teenage children for the weekend to Woodstock, New York to see her mother, a hippie whom she hasn't seen in 20 years. The reunion is less awkward than expected, but there are still unresolved issues between mother and daughter, and the kids include a son who uses a video camera to fulfill his dream of being a movie maker a la Warner Herzog, as well as a stuck-up intellectual vegetarian daughter. Once you see the hippie culture still alive in Woodstock, the rest of the movie is basically a dysfunctional family story, how mother, grandmother, and the teenage kids still conflict, and how they all deal with the quirky locals of Woodstock, not all of whom are hippies. The movie philosophizes but has no deep meaning or surprises, but is still mildly entertaining. See more Read all reviews
Peace, Love & Misunderstanding

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Movie Info

Synopsis With her divorce looming, a lawyer (Catherine Keener) ventures to upstate New York with her children in tow to visit her hippie mother (Jane Fonda), whom she hasn't seen in 20 years.
Director
Bruce Beresford
Producer
Claude Dal Farra, Brice Dal Farra, Lauren Munsch, Jonathan Burkhart
Screenwriter
Christina Mengert, Joseph Muszynski
Distributor
IFC Films
Rating
R (Some Sexual References|Drug Content)
Genre
Comedy, Drama, Romance
Original Language
English
Release Date (Theaters)
Jun 8, 2012, Limited
Release Date (Streaming)
Dec 5, 2016
Box Office (Gross USA)
$539.9K
Runtime
1h 36m
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