Observer by Rex Reed

Judi Dench can do no wrong, and playing Queen Victoria for the second time in the richly satisfying Victoria and Abdul is an acting lesson par excellence that proves how rapturous it is to watch this great artist do everything right.

Movie Nation by Roger Moore

Start to finish, it’s a bloody delightful romp.

The Atlantic by Christopher Orr

Victoria & Abdul is worth seeing for Dench’s magisterial performance and for Frears’s light but sure directorial touch. Just don’t mistake it for actual history.

Total Film by Jamie Graham

This funny, touching adap of Shrabani Basu’s 2010 biography has its own chemistry, withering wit and unsentimental message of acceptance. A royal treat.

Empire by Dan Jolin

A sorta-sequel to Mrs Brown deals effectively with another of Queen Victoria’s unconventional friendships and reprises Judi Dench’s powerful and unparalleled portrayal.

Philadelphia Daily News by Gary Thompson

Victoria & Abdul, though, is Dench’s show. She wrings dignity and humanity (and a good deal of comedy) from Lee Hall’s broadly drawn scenario, much as she did in this movie’s cross-cultural bookend, "The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel."

The Seattle Times by Moira Macdonald

Thanks to Dench, Victoria & Abdul is constantly engaging and at times moving.

San Francisco Chronicle by Mick LaSalle

The story told in Victoria and Abdul is so far-fetched that it really helps to know that it is, in its broad outlines, true.

RogerEbert.com by Susan Wloszczyna

This sturdy regal period piece provides a perfect opportunity to properly adore the 82-year-old legend as she revisits the role of Queen Victoria two decades after first playing the indomitable monarch in “Mrs. Brown.”

Entertainment Weekly by Leah Greenblatt

Uneven but endearing.

The Hollywood Reporter by David Rooney

Fine performances from a cast of pros generally win out over the story's more formulaic aspects.

The Playlist by Rodrigo Pérez

Victoria & Abdul is a movie that flirts with exploring prejudice, cultural tension, power, and religion, but never really consummates the ideas. At best, it tries to humorously dismantle the absurdity of empires and royalty, but that’s about as subversive as it gets.

Screen Daily by Jonathan Romney

The film’s lavish production values and a comic register more impish than truly acerbic makes this a surprisingly cosy piece of luxury heritage cinema.

The Telegraph by Robbie Collin

Frears’ film is all nostalgia and inertia – a tale ablaze with historical import and contemporary resonance, reduced to commemorative biscuit tin proportions.

Screen International by Jonathan Romney

The film’s lavish production values and a comic register more impish than truly acerbic makes this a surprisingly cosy piece of luxury heritage cinema.

TheWrap by Alonso Duralde

There’s not much to Victoria & Abdul, but as a delivery system for Judi Dench, it serves its purpose. Otherwise, it’s just Buckingham Palace fetishism cranked up to peak mumsy.

IndieWire by Ben Croll

Victoria & Abdul is an otherwise benignly toothless, pleasantly glossy affair, but it does force us to confront one tricky question: When treating a subject as fraught as British imperial rule, when does a film’s benign inoffensiveness become offensive in and of itself?

The Guardian by Xan Brooks

What a peculiarly dodgy, conservative film this is – a lazy salute to a good queen and her faithful Indian servant. It’s a film about the Raj era that looks as if it was made back then, too.

CineVue by John Bleasdale

It is difficult to work out what to dislike most about Victoria and Abdul: the literal foot-licking or the cliché-ridden plot, but the greatest shame is the waste of a genuinely fascinating piece of history and a world-class Judi Dench performance.