Beatrix Potter has delighted generations of children with her books. But she kept her own private life locked carefully away. Oscar-winning star Renée Zellweger is now bringing her secret story to the screen in "Miss Potter," the first film directed by Chris Noonan since his charming 1995 movie, "Babe." It is set in the high summer days of late Victorian and Edwardian England, during which Beatrix develops her natural skills as artist and story-teller. When she finally publishes her debut book, "The Tale of Peter Rabbit," she becomes a writing celebrity. It also leads to courtship and her first love with publisher Norman Warne, played by Ewan McGregor. Their relationship and his marriage proposal in July, 1905, was to change Beatrix's life for ever.

It was a love which she could not announce - or even talk about. In high-society London, her parents had insisted she keep it from friends and neighbours. They considered her proposed wedding a mismatch. Warne, they said, was from 'trade' and demanded that she carefully reconsider their life together. Beatrix allowed herself to be persuaded to leave her fiancé and London. It was supposed to be a time for reflection and calm. But, instead, she faced tragedy and loneliness and returned, with a different outlook. She became a woman of strong views and independence. She also built up a farming dynasty in the Lake District - a dynasty over which she took charge long after her writing career virtually ended in 1913. It established her as a woman ahead of her time. Despite becoming the world’s most successful children's writer and a wealthy landowner and prize-winning farmer, she never forgot her first love. — More here

Visual review here

Cartoon Bunnies Don't Lend Life to 'Miss Potter'
Joe Morgenstern
Wall Street Journal
This attractive, superficial stab at biography, with Renée Zellweger in the title role, is more concerned with a lonely woman's quest for acceptance and love than with an author's worldly achievements.

'Miss Potter' draws on enchantment
Claudia Puig
USA Today
It is a lovely film for the holiday season, as well as afterward, and is reminiscent of Finding Neverland, without the darker undercurrents. Zellweger does a fine job of fleshing out the plucky character despite the occasional simper.

'Miss Potter' charming, but lacks subject's spunk
Carrie Rickey
Philadelphia Inquirer
The uncertain rhythms and stresses of the piece suggest that they didn't know whether they were making a romance, a biography or a bedtime story. Miss Potter is all three, of course. And all are very engaging -- and happily G-rated.

Endearing
Maitland McDonagh
TV Guide's Movie Guide
This modest look at the real life behind the watercolor fantasy world of Beatrix Potter's delicately witty children's books is endearing without being especially engaging... Criticizing such a gentle film too vigorously would be like giving Peter Rabbit or Tom Kitten a swift kick in the nose.

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