Sameer Callahan It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

Keira Brennan The movie is made so realistic it has a lot of that WoW feeling at the right moments and never tooo over the top. the suspense is done so well and the emotion is felt. Very well put together with the music and all.

Skyler Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

Billy Ollie Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Dunham16 Holds your interest as a visually correct period drama casting several veterans of many among them Emma Thompson, Greg Wise, Derek Jacobi, Julie Walters and Claudia Cardinale. The story on the surface has merit. An impotent man marries beneath his station a young bride he traps in a gloomy gilded cage. Once several good samaritans separately believe they can help her adjust without losing everything she schemes a path which will make her a rebel Victorian society. She historically challenge her husband's exalted place in the community herself again changing locale and socioeconomics hoping for a better life. An enticing true story not in my opinion well scripted by Emma Thompson which seems the reason the general audience and critical reaction is not higher.

Angus T. Cat I was looking forward to seeing Effie Gray. I knew the story of Effie's marriage to John Ruskin from the TV series Desperate Romantics.I was very disappointed by the movie. While Desperate Romantics played the story for laughs, with a comic air, Effie Gray told the story dramatically. Or tried to, rather.The screenplay only told part of the tale of how Effie married John Ruskin but their marriage was unconsummated. No one knows exactly why, but it seems to be because of Ruskin's disgust with "her person". So perhaps the old story that Ruskin had never seen a naked woman and thought they were smooth like statues, and was repulsed to find on their wedding night that Effie had public hair, may have a grain of truth in it. The movie shows Effie and John finally getting away from his oppressive parents and living in Venice. However, Ruskin makes it clear that he is in Italy to work and leaves his wife to find her own amusement with Italian officers. Effie resists being seduced by one officer and realizes there's something she isn't getting in her marriage. However, the pace of the story moves slowly..... very slowly....I kept saying to my husband, when are they getting to the good bits? Finally Ruskin, Effie, and the artist Millais, leave for Scotland for Millais, to paint Ruskin's portrait. At last they were they getting to the dramatic bits when Millais and Effie fall in love. It was slow.... very slow... lots of scenes of rain and rocks and waterfalls and Ruskin making remarks that turn off Millais. The Ruskin in this movie is so cold and callus there's nothing sympathetic about him. Millais though is Mr Nice Guy without much depth to his character. And that's about it. Effie goes to see her friend (played by Emma Thompson) who discreetly arranges a lawyer for Effie, Effie invites her younger sister to visit her in London, Effie leaves the house with her sister, saying they are going to visit their mother in Scotland, and Effie serves Ruskin with annulment papers. The end. Where was the drama of the annulment? In this movie there is only a brief scene where Ruskin and his parents shut the door on the lawyer after the papers are given to him. There's no mention of the struggles Effie had to get the annulment through the courts, no mention of how she and Millais married a year after the annulment was granted, and no mention of how Effie was then not permitted to attend any occasion with Queen Victoria, as a woman who had been previously married could not be allowed in the presence of the Queen. This movie was a missed opportunity that took a gripping and fascinating story and turned the major characters one dimensional. Ruskin is a fruitcake, Millais Mr Nice Guy and Effie is an Innocent Victim. Shame- with a better screenplay and tighter direction this could have been a revealing drama about Victorian England behind closed doors. Too bad the script didn't allow any real drama to develop, and like Ruskin shied away from nakedness (There is a scene with Effie spying Millais taking a bath in a lake. Nice to have some full male nudity for the ladies. Alas, he is seen from the back and from a distance.) There's no risk of showing characters' raw and stripped emotions. There's no schmutz here- unlike in Desperate Romantics, which, with all its playing the historical facts with a light touch, led the audience to really care for Effie, Millais, and art in the nineteenth century.

jacqueestorozynski As someone steeped in Pre-raphaelite history and having read many books re the Effie Gray/Ruskin marriage I was interested in seeing this film. At first I was ready to dislike it based on inaccuracies like the fact that Millais paintings shown at the beginning, where Effie was the model. were on display when the artist hadn't met her yet. I also disliked Julie Walters who was back doing Mrs Overall. However, after a while I began to warm to it and although it was slow I enjoyed watching it. My only criticism would be that the build up to a climax (more than Effie got) was wasted as there should have been much more about the court case annulment and Effie's marriage to Millais. The masturbation scene was completely unnecessary and did not add to the film. I did wonder why Celestia Fox who was responsible for the casting, made Millais look like everyone's idea of Rossetti and nothing like the baby faced golden haired artist of fact. Greg Wise seems to be cornering the market in cold, austere characters witness the reason TV production Outcast, but he plays them well. I wasn't sure about Emma Thompson, she has mannerisms that can be irritating. When the film ended I was left feeling that we were left hanging and anyone who knew nothing of the story would have wondered what the point of the film was.

HillstreetBunz In some places billed as a story of a terrible scandal, the film fails to deliver on that promise in any way. The 'facts' of the story that are on display in this film are all those that may have led up to scandal, but nothing here tells of what happened when (if) it broke! Lit as if it all took place in midwinter in the half light, I can only guess at the costumes and the sets as mostly o just saw pale faces in a sea of shadows. It is very slowly plotted, taking at least 30 minutes to get going, and the music drags it down even further into dullness, but the real shame of the film is its failure to make any real attempt to understand anyone except Effie herself. If the allegations the film makes are true (e.g. Mrs Ruskin senior was a poisoner) it's something that deserves more than the cardboard cutout that Julie Walters was given to play by way of an explanation. One expects licence in a 'based on a real life story' story (!) but it had the feel of a few bare facts knitted together with 90% fiction, which is a strange mix. I confess to not knowing how much was true and how much was Emma's own imagination, but it certainly felt like Victoria n morality and mores crudely put through the mincer of modern ideas. Badly done Emma, badly done!