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.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
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]
This iron lady of cinema deserves better.
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.
Entertainment Weekly by Lisa Schwarzbaum
Streep is a pleasure to behold; less so the rest of The Iron Lady.
Let it be said that Ms. Streep is galvanizing, even as the film slogs through too much information and not nearly enough illumination.
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.