First reviews land for Florence Pugh and Zach Braff's A Good Person

florence pugh, a good person
First reviews for Florence Pugh's A Good Person Sky
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The first reviews for A Good Person, the new film from Florence Pugh and Zach Braff, have landed.

The pair serve as producers for the film, which sees Pugh in the lead role and Braff on writing and directing duties.

The movie sees Pugh play Allison, whose life is thrown into chaos after being involved in a car accident which kills her future sister-in-law. During her battle with opioid addiction, she forms a bond with her would-be father-in-law Daniel (played by Morgan Freeman), setting her on the road to recovery.

florence pugh, a good person
Sky

Related: Florence Pugh never wants to be seen as a "one-trick pony"

Ahead of its theatrical release on Friday (March 24) and its subsequent streaming on Sky Cinema next month, the first reviews have landed on Rotten Tomatoes, and it’s proving to be a mixed bag so far with an approval rating of 50% fresh.

Here's what the critics are saying:

WhyNow

“A Good Person is without a doubt elevated by Pugh’s performance, [but it] doesn’t manage to find anything new to say about its themes.”

The Guardian

"In his dual capacity as writer and director, Zach Braff here puts us through an ordeal of excruciating contrived nonsense: a masturbatory Calvary of ersatz empathy and emotional wellness."

Slant

“The more that Zach Braff’s script tries to thematically tie its disparate threads together, the more that A Good Person comes to resemble the very same type of neat and tidy self-contained version of reality that it ironically skewers in its prologue.”

The Hollywood Reporter

"For all its heavy-handedness, however, A Good Person (even the title screams 'Significance!') proves affecting at times, thanks largely to the precise work by the two lead performers. Pugh makes her character’s arc from a woman with everything to live for to suicidal depression believable in every respect, while Freeman cannily underplays his character’s torment as well as the decency that enables him to befriend the person who caused such ruination in his life."

florence pugh, a good person
Sky

Related: Florence Pugh has another Marvel movie lined up after Thunderbolts

Collider

“Led by two solid performances by Pugh and Freeman, A Good Person shows growth from Braff as both a writer and director, as he attempts to push himself into a more mature story.”

HeyUGuys

“Raw, emotional yet touching, and melancholic, A Good Person soars on its two lead performances, and while there are a few bumps, it’s one of 2023's brightest early sparks.”

The AV Club

"A Good Person is all over the place; a mismatch of tones. One part of it is a serious drama about overcoming grief and forging a path forward in the aftermath of a tragedy. The other part is a comedy of manners about the hijinks that can arise when people of different generations try to live together. Neither part works. The drama is a cluster of scenes with bad dialogue and platitudes instead of actual pathos. The comedy comes in when it’s uncalled for, breaking whatever genuine emotion the actors worked hard to craft. Sometimes all of this happens within the same scene, causing whiplash."

florence pugh, a good person
Sky

Deadline

"The two leads carry the film in an immensely gratifying way, and Braff is alert to the story’s many dramatic, even sometimes amusing, possibilities. And it’s only at the end that you can understand this often turbulent film’s title."

Variety

"Braff unfolds his story on parallel tracks: Ally’s rocky road to recovery, and Daniel trying — and failing — to be an effective guardian to his orphaned granddaughter, Ryan (Celeste O’Connor), who at 16 is doing her own acting out. What’s compelling about the movie isn’t so much that a single tragedy connects both stories but that we see, in the telling, how trauma has its own karma, spreading across a family."

A Good Person is released in cinemas on March 24 and is available to watch on Sky Cinema from April 28.

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