Female Film Critics 24/375
A movie called Dumplin’ could go either way but, thanks to an appealing cast and feel-good message, this one is a winner. Despite the fact that her mom is former beauty queen, plus-size teen Willowdean is comfortable in her own skin. She enters the local Miss Teen Bluebonnet pageant, becoming a role model for other unlikely entrants.
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Since the plot pivots on Dolly Parton songs and the country singer serves as a role model, it’s a major disappointment that Dolly never actually appears in this homespun coming-of-age comedy, set in Clover City, Texas.
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Dumplin’ is far from perfect, but it’s lovely — kinda like its heroine! — a movie that warmly embraces a wide(ish) range of girls-and-women-as-people, one that doesn’t reduce its large heroine to nothing more than her size: she’s simply a cool, funny, confused, perplexed, messed-up human being who still has a lot of growing up to do.
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Set to a peppy, empowering soundtrack of Dolly Parton hits, director Anne Fletcher’s Dumplin’ is an appealing coming-of-age dramedy about a plus-sized teen who confronts stereotypes — and her own rocky relationship with her beauty queen mother — head-on by entering a small-town Texas pageant. Willowdean “Will” Dickson (Danielle Macdonald) loves her mom, Rosie (Jennifer Aniston), but they couldn’t be more different.