The Lady in the Van on 132 reviews, with an average rating of 7.2/10. The site's consensus states, "Led by a marvelous performance from Maggie Smith, "Lady in the Van" wrings poignant, often hilarious insight from its fact-based source material." On Metacritic the film holds a score of 70 out of 100, based on 30 critics, indicating "generally favourable reviews". Guy Lodge, of "Variety" magazine, attended the worldwide premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival. After the screening, he described Smith's portrayal of Mary Shepherd as "one of the most tailor-made leading roles of her late career". Even though, he says, the film is "low
Lady in the Water Nickelodeon's "" television series, which also received overwhelmingly negative reviews. CNN's Tom Charity, among others, has called "Lady in the Water" the worst film of 2006. It was listed by "Variety" as one of the ten "biggest (financial) losers" of 2006. Wesley Morris of "The Boston Globe" wrote that though the film is "built on too much ponderous self-regard…[t]here is a good chunk of "Lady in the Water" that is simply too well made and affectingly acted to dismiss as a mere exercise in arrogance." Conversely, the film was ranked 6th in the influential film magazine "Cahiers du cinéma"s top