Rolling Stone by Peter Travers

The sharp economy of Lloyd's direction allows the incontestably great Streep to take impressionistic snatches of a life and build a woman in full. This is acting of the highest order.

New York Post by Kyle Smith

Sincerely directed by one woman (Phyllida Lloyd, who did "Mamma Mia!") and smartly written by another (Abi Morgan), the film stars an unsurpassable Meryl Streep, whose ability to empathize with her characters has never been more gloriously impassioned than it is in this titanic performance.

Charlotte Observer by Roger Moore

Lloyd finesses a deft script of brisk, quick strokes by Abi Morgan ("Brick Lane," "Shame") into a terrific entertainment.

Entertainment Weekly by Lisa Schwarzbaum

Streep is a pleasure to behold; less so the rest of The Iron Lady.

Chicago Tribune by Michael Phillips

Meryl Streep excels as Margaret Thatcher. And the movie itself does not work.

Philadelphia Inquirer by Steven Rea

Yea or nay, love or hate, the portrait that Streep delivers in Phyllida Lloyd's impressionistic biopic is astonishing.

St. Louis Post-Dispatch by Calvin Wilson

As biopics go, The Iron Lady is among the more intriguing ones.

San Francisco Chronicle by Mick LaSalle

Imagine a biopic about Ronald Reagan that leaves out Gorbachev but instead dramatizes his years with Alzheimer's, and you'll get an idea of this film's misplaced focus.

The Hollywood Reporter by David Rooney

Meryl Streep gives a fully realized portrait of British Prime Minister Thatcher in a biopic that values character over context.

New York Magazine (Vulture) by David Edelstein

Shallow but satisfying, largely because of Meryl Streep and her big fake English teeth and gift for using mimicry as a means of achieving empathy.

Slant Magazine by R. Kurt Osenlund

The wonder and terror of Meryl Streep's performance in The Iron Lady is her formidable ability to nail the disheartening talents of not just Margaret Thatcher, but so many conservative politicians like her, who have a tremendous knack for changing minds and beckoning cheers while underlining their own rigid ignorance.

Boxoffice Magazine

Where the actress succeeds, all but disappearing into the role of Thatcher, the rest of the film is a bizarre amalgamation of archival footage, half-baked montages, hallucinations that push the bounds of poetic license straight into the gray area of bad taste, and plain old tedium.

Village Voice

Despite the story's conceit of placing the viewer inside Thatcher's head, she never feels like a real person - but this is more the fault of Morgan's script than Streep's typically studied performance, much of it buried under prosthetics.

The New Yorker by David Denby

This bio-pic, written by Abi Morgan and directed by Phyllida Lloyd, is an oddly unsettled compound of glorification and malice. It whirts around restlessly and winds up nowhere. [2 Jan. 2012, p.78]

Observer by Rex Reed

Let it be said that Ms. Streep is galvanizing, even as the film slogs through too much information and not nearly enough illumination.

Variety by Leslie Felperin

Fuzzy-headed biopic, which glosses over the former British prime minister's politics in favor of a glib, breakneck whirl around her career and marriage.

The A.V. Club by Tasha Robinson

Strangely, this Thatcher biopic might have been far more worthwhile if it wasn't about Thatcher: The aged, dotty stranger hanging out with her dead husband is a more compelling subject.

Time Out by Keith Uhlich

This iron lady of cinema deserves better.