The true story of a small town, working class father who embarks on a walk across the U.S. to crusade against bullying after his son is tormented in high school for being gay. Meanwhile he realizes he is instead missing out on his sons life back at home.... (Full plot summary below)
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The true story of a small town, working class father who embarks on a walk across the U.S. to crusade against bullying after his son is tormented in high school for being gay. Meanwhile he realizes he is instead missing out on his sons life back at home.
Leave your thoughts about Joe Bell.
| The Film StageJared MobarakThe entirety of Good Joe Bell is an awakening not for those who actively harm at-risk youth like Jadin, but those who don’t realize the implicit harm they’re supplying by centering allyship on themselves rather than those they’re supporting. |
| The GuardianBenjamin LeeGood Joe Bell is a generous film about an outsider travelling across the country realising the importance of listening and learning from others (as well as his own guilty conscience). |
| IndieWireKate ErblandWhile formulaic on its face, Green’s film resists the sort of obvious cinematic catharsis expected of such a story, resulting in a final product that earns its emotional beats. |
| The Hollywood ReporterDavid RooneyGreen's grasp of this tender, family-focused story shows equal restraint and compassion, and mastery of a tricky structure. |
| Vanity FairRichard LawsonGood Joe Bell could have been schmaltzy, simplistic, too hungry for uplift. Green, though—and McMurtry and Ossana and, gulp, Wahlberg—keep the film in check. They don’t lose sight of what is really being spoken about here. |
| TheWrapSteve PondAn open-hearted, unapologetically emotional story of a man struggling to come to terms with what happened to his son and with his own complicity in it, “Good Joe Bell” makes good use of the Everyman appeal of Mark Wahlberg; if it doesn’t feel like a landmark the way Ossana and McMurtry’s “Brokeback Mountain” or McMurtry’s “The Last Picture Show” and “Terms of Endearment” were, it’s a quietly affecting road trip that gets to where it wants to go and may prompt a few tears along the way. |
| UproxxMike RyanWhat’s remarkable about Good Joe Bell is Wahlberg plays the role in such a nuanced way, by the end of the movie you want that rousing speech. But it never comes. |
| New York Magazine (Vulture)Bilge EbiriThe problem with Joe Bell isn’t that it’s telling Joe’s story; that’s an important (and tragic) tale that should be told. The problem is that it fails to also tell Jadin’s story — even after it makes the point that Jadin’s journey is inextricable from Joe’s. |
| Chicago Sun-TimesRichard RoeperJoe Bell never quite packs the dramatic punch the real-life story deserves. |
| Rolling StoneK. Austin CollinsFor Joe Bell to largely be a tale of one man’s inner journey rather than a dive into the unknowns of his son’s inner life and eventual tragedy is not out of turn. It is a worthwhile story to tell. The flaw is not in assigning gravity to Joe’s journey. |
