The Bridges of Madison County (film) has a 66 out of 100 rating, based on 22 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". According to Janet Maslin, "Clint Eastwood, director and alchemist, has transformed "The Bridges of Madison County" into something bearable—no, something even better. Limited by the vapidity of this material while he trims its excesses with the requisite machete, Mr. Eastwood locates a moving, elegiac love story at the heart of Mr. Waller's self-congratulatory overkill. The movie has leanness and surprising decency, and Meryl Streep has her best role in years. Looking sturdy and voluptuous in her plain housedress (the year is 1965), Ms. Streep rises
The Bridges of Madison County found the novella's prose comparable to that of "Jonathan Livingston Seagull" (1970) by Richard Bach. "The Independent" Nicolette Jones found the novella reminiscent of the books published by Mills & Boon while Owen Gleiberman found it more similar to an anecdote than a regular narrative. "Orlando Sentinel" "Publishers Weekly" found "The Bridges of Madison County" "Quietly powerful and thoroughly credible". L.S. Klepp of "Entertainment Weekly" called "Bridges" "a short, poignant story, moving precisely because it has the ragged edges of reality". Roger Ebert of the "Chicago Sun-Times" praised the novella's "compelling" story for "elevating to a spiritual level the common