Boobirt Stylish but barely mediocre overall

Tetrady not as good as all the hype

Ella-May O'Brien Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

Hattie I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.

kaydenpat At the end of the movie, the claim was made that in 1920 women gained the right to vote in the United States. This is inaccurate. Only White women gained this right. Black women didn't get the right to vote until the 1960s. This fact should have been clarified. The film itself was okay. Not sure how accurate it was which is what you can expect with most "based on true events" movies.

TheLittleSongbird The story of the Suffragette Movement and the right for the female vote is a fascinating and quite important part of history that is very much overlooked in film and still holds much relevance today.A large part as to why is the potential problems with how a film would portray it. Despite being really interesting, it is difficult to get the portrayal the Suffragette Movement and the right for the female vote spot on. There is always the danger of heavy-handedness, being too careful, being one-dimensional and being too cold or sentimentalised.'Suffragette' to me was a compelling film that did more right than it did wrong, but at the same time it does not escape a few of the traps that portraying this subject poses. It is a brave and worthy attempt though, and even though the finished product is flawed 'Suffragette' gets a lot of applause and respect from me for trying.It doesn't escape the trap of being heavy-handed, with some of the build ups overdone, occasional preachiness in the writing and parts in the music score intrusively orchestrated. While the brutality most likely did happen and it brings a darkness that stops the film from being too much of one tone, parts did jar like with the laundry boss, which agreed did feel like they belonged in another film.Nor does it escape portraying its characters in a stock and one-dimensional way. Did feel a lot for the women, and found myself inspired by their cause and rooting for them even if they did go the wrong way about it in parts of the film and in history. However, especially the boss and with the sole exception of Steed, the male characters are stock and unsympathetically drawn, found myself really infuriated by Sonny's actions as well and found him generally a placid personality. There are a few real life characters intersected here, which was interesting but appeared too briefly, while they made an impression David Lloyd George and Emmeline Pankhurst were reduced to cameo roles.However, it is very handsomely and evocatively mounted in period detail, being suitably naturalistic and sombre. The cinematography, with the hand-held technique, has been criticised for being excessive and lacking focus, it didn't bother me that much and thought it gave a real and appropriate sense of frenzy, claustrophobia and fear. Apart from the odd intrusive part, the music is rousing yet understated. Much of the direction gives clarity to the story and a sense of pace and the film always looks great.Much of the writing is fine too, some heavy-handedness here as well as parts that are a bit emotionally cold and too careful but the main and familiar events are handled powerfully, sincerely and thoughtfully. The storytelling, a vast majority of the time, is spirit-rousing, heart-stopping, moving and inspiring, the ending was really quite powerful.Carey Mulligan is particularly magnificent of the uniformly impressive cast, and Brendan Gleeson and Anne-Marie Duff are not far behind. Meryl Streep's appearance is brief but very memorable, while Helena Bonham Carter brings a wonderful feistiness to the ringleader of the group. Ben Whishaw, on the other hand, is a little dull as Sonny, though the way the character is written deserves a large part of the blame here, and the laundry boss character is too much of a stock pantomime villain-like character.Overall, brave, worthy and largely successful if flawed telling of a fascinating, important and relevant piece of history, that has been overlooked. 7/10 Bethany Cox

grantss England, 1912. Women don't have the vote and one woman, Emmeline Pankhurst (played by Meryl Streep), is trying to rectify that. She is the leader of the Suffragette movement and, after trying peaceful means to obtain their goals, their methods turn more extreme. On the fringes of the movement is Maud Watts (Carey Mulligan), a factory worker. She tries to stay out of the struggle but is inexorably drawn into it. What she sees and endures is brutal, and ultimately ground-breaking.The story of a how woman came to get the vote in the UK is a story of courage and conviction and one that deserves telling. The work of Emmeline Pankhurst and the Suffragettes was revolutionary, necessary and ultimately successful. The movie shows well what the situation was like for women at the time and how they achieved their ends.However, it is incredibly heavy-handed in its approach. Every male in the movie is portrayed one-dimensionally, as an ogre and oppressor and unsympathetic to women and their cause. There is not a single likable, or even non-dislikeable, male in the movie. A bit difficult to like the movie too much when it is so manipulative and unbalanced.Quite dull in spells, too. Pretty much conventional, paint-by-numbers storytelling.

satxfan This should have been a gripping and rousing story about the British fight for women's right to vote, but the overly-long and meandering script spoiled the impact. The film came across as a made-for-TV docudrama.Women's rights is such an important issue that it's too bad the film wasn't done well, especially since it was written, produced and directed by women.The problem, as I see it, is that they tried to cram in too many little events and details rather than focusing on the main story of the political struggle. They should have edited the script much more carefully. They could have cut whole scenes and cut out superfluous characters and given the story more impact. For example, they didn't need to show the young girl being molested by the shop owner and later 'saved' by the main character. They could have instead shown that the women were at the mercy of the owner's lechery without bringing in a whole other character. They also could have skipped the force-feeding in the prison and addressed it in dialogue. Same for the hokey adoption scene of the little boy – that could have been done in dialogue, which probably would have been much more devastating. Cutting some of those 'detours' would have kept the focus on the political struggle AND would have cut at least 20 minutes off the running time of the film. Overall, a great opportunity to inspire was wasted.