Miss Meadows

It's so relentlessly upbeat and deliberately artificial that it admits no cynicism or judgment, and it makes the film daringly weird.

The earnestness brings the movie from mildly irritating pastiche status to actively awful, and that is all she wrote.

May we be excused, "Miss Meadows"?

It exists somewhere between serious character study and satirical fish-out-of-water story, never figuring out which it wants to be.

Despite an eccentric streak (which turns erratic), the script doesn't allow much room for the premise to take flight.

Hopkins fails to fulfill the potential of her own script.

Tonally awkward and a bit too underwhelming to fully succeed as the black comedy cum violent thriller character study it is trying to be.

It's a shame the odd-for-oddball's sake of a plot had to overshadow Holmes' charming performance, for this could've been the role that kicked her relatively safe career into gear.

Miss Meadows is an interesting character study of someone just trying to make the world a better place through murder, and questioning whether her methods may actually be the cause of the world's decay.

... struggles to find a consistent tone, and doesn't offer sufficient context to give emotional resonance to a female-empowerment fantasy that ultimately feels too detached from reality.