It Ain't Over: reviews

What the critics say average 7.9 from 13 outlets

• 9.1 Original-CinLiam Lacey A warm-hearted look back at one of professional sport’s most colourful folk heroes, the late Yogi Berra, the documentary is also a film with a score to settle. Read
• 8.9 The Austin ChronicleSteve Davis Above everything else, this tribute is a valentine to a man you can’t help but love. Perhaps the legend of Yogi Berra will begin a brand-new phase, thanks to this documentary. Read
• 8.8 New Orleans Times-PicayuneMike Scott This is the kind of movie that makes you want to sit through the credits, and not for some “hidden” scene featuring superheroes eating shawarma. Rather, it’s because it’s so pleasant you won’t want “It Ain’t Over” to be over. Read
• 8.0 New York TimesGlenn Kenny The main brief of “It Ain’t Over,” a lively, engaging and moving documentary, is more or less stated upfront by a friendly but mildly indignant Lindsay Berra, the granddaughter of its subject, the baseball player Yogi Berra. Read
• 8.0 The Wall Street JournalKyle Smith The movie about his life and legend, written and directed by Sean Mullin, has two purposes and succeeds delightfully at both. Read
• 8.0 Los Angeles TimesMichael Rechtshaffen Serving as a potent reminder of the stellar athletic ability that, in time, had been overshadowed by his admittedly outsized personality, the affectionate “It Ain’t Over” offers a winning coda to the career assessment of the late, great Yogi Berra. Read
• 8.0 The Arizona RepublicBill Goodykoontz It’s not a warts-and-all treatment because, at least in this telling, there are no warts. It’s more about securing Berra among a new generation of fans as one of the greatest players who ever lived. And on that front, it more than succeeds. Read
• 7.5 Roger EbertSheila O'Malley The Berra family tells the stories with familiarity and affection, often laughing or crying: this is well-trod ground, tall tales, the narrative of their family. Read
• 7.5 Movie NationRoger Moore It’s a sweetly sentimental documentary, acknowledging Berra’s own role in leaning into the “cartoon” image that the sporting media built around him and the confusion that created. Read
• 7.5 The Washington PostThomas Floyd Berra’s advice, of course, tends to be dizzyingly contradictory but deceptively simple. The same could be said of “It Ain’t Over,” which zips through Berra’s life without ever feeling rushed. Read
• 7.5 Chicago TribuneMichael Phillips The movie itself is more of a square than a circle — straightforward and honorific, peppered with old and newer archival footage. Yet Berra’s ground-level appeal keeps the documentary from getting too full of itself. Read
• 7.5 San Francisco ChronicleG. Allen Johnson Sean Mullin’s documentary “It Ain’t Over” is literally inside baseball. The film is essentially a Berra family project, an attempt to rehabilitate the professional reputation of someone who often doesn’t get his due as a player. Read
• 7.0 Christian Science MonitorPeter Rainer You might think it impossible that someone as celebrated as New York Yankees superstar Yogi Berra, whose career stretched from the 1940s to the 1980s, could ever be undervalued as a player and manager. But that’s precisely the assessment that Sean Mullin, the director of the affectionate documentary “It Ain’t Over,” aims to correct. Read