Love, Gilda

2018 documentary directed by Lisa D'Apolito

Gilda Radner
Amy Poehler
Melissa McCarthy
Bill Hader
Maya Rudolph
Lorne Michaels
Jordan Walker-Perlman
Cecily Strong
Martin Short
Laraine Newman
Chevy Chase
Paul Shaffer
Stephen Schwartz
Andrew Alexander

CinematographyRob Featherstone
Nick HigginsEdited byAnne Alvergue
David CohenMusic byMiriam Cutler

Production
companies

3 Faces Films
Motto Pictures

Distributed byMagnolia Pictures (USA) (theatrical)
CNN Films (USA) (TV)

Release dates

April 18, 2018 (2018-04-18) (Tribeca Film Festival)
September 21, 2018 (2018-09-21)

Running time

88 minutesCountriesUnited States
CanadaLanguageEnglishBox office$616,849 (US)^[1]

Love, Gilda is a 2018 American-Canadian documentary film directed and co-produced by Lisa D'Apolito. The film is about the life and career of American comedian Gilda Radner. Love, Gilda premiered on April 18, 2018 at the Tribeca Film Festival and was limited released in the United States on September 21, 2018. The movie received widespread acclaim from critics.^[2]

Synopsis

The film presents the life and career of Gilda Radner through her own eyes using her diaries, audio tapes, home movies and interviewing some of her closest friends at that time.^[3]

Cast

Gilda Radner (archive footage)
Amy Poehler
Melissa McCarthy
Bill Hader
Chevy Chase
Janis Hirsch
Lorne Michaels
Jordan Walker-Pearlman
Laraine Newman
Maya Rudolph
Stephen Schwartz
Alan Zweibel
Rosie Shuster
Martin Short
Andrew Alexander
Anne Beatts
Robin Zweibel
Michael Radner
Paul Shaffer

Reception

On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, Love, Gilda has an approval rating of 88% based on 90 reviews, with an average rating of 7.3/10. The site's critical consensus reads: "Love, Gilda pays gentle, unequivocal tribute to its subject with more than enough of her genuine spirit to compensate for a lack of critical distance or truly fresh insight."^[2] Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned a score of 74 out of 100, based on 26 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".^[4]

David Fear from Rolling Stone however gave the film two and a half stars out of five, stating: "In terms of both professional best-of moments and personal artifacts (home movies, old pics, those journals and cassette recordings), the filmmaker has a treasure trove at her fingertips; she just doesn't seem to know how to shape much of it, or how to mine it for more than checkpoints and pop-psychological carping about comedy and pain."^[5]

Matt Zoller Seitz writing for the website RogerEbert.com gave Love, Gilda three out of four stars and said: "Director Lisa D'Apolito's documentary is at its best detailing Radner's struggle to make her voice heard in a field that she adored, but that wasn't often hospitable to women, even when the individual men in it thought they were being gracious and inclusive."^[6] Jason Zinoman from The New York Times called the film "a portrait of a brief and brilliant career" and completed: "Where the movie succeeds best is as an illumination of her charm and spirit. Ms. Radner played eccentric characters with raucous abandon and jangly big-kid physicality, but she also projected a vulnerability that made you care for them. The movie explores some of her insecurities, particularly with regard to her eating disorder, but its tone never strays too far from the light and breezy."^[7]

References

^ "Love, Gilda". Box Office Mojo. Archived from the original on 4 November 2018. Retrieved 4 November 2018.
^ ^a ^b "Love, Gilda (2018)". Rotten Tomatoes. Fandango. Archived from the original on 2018-11-04. Retrieved 10 October 2021.
^ "'Love, Gilda' filmmakers were guided by Gilda Radner's legacy" Archived 2018-11-12 at the Wayback Machine, Detroit Free Press
^ "Love, Gilda". Metacritic. Archived from the original on 7 July 2018. Retrieved 4 November 2018.
^ Fear, David. "'Love, Gilda' Review: Gilda Radner Doc Is a Clips Montage with Benefits". Rolling Stone. Archived from the original on 4 November 2018. Retrieved 4 November 2018.
^ Zoller Seitz, Matt. "Love, Gilda". RogerEbert.com. Archived from the original on 4 November 2018. Retrieved 4 November 2018.
^ Zinoman, Jason. "Review: In 'Love, Gilda,' a Portrait of a Brief and Brilliant Career". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 4 November 2018. Retrieved 4 November 2018.