The Last Word

Harriet Lauler has spent her life running a successful business and managing everyone around her, so when she decides that even her obituary should meet her standards, she hires a young local journalist, Anne Sherman, to write it. Harriet is unhappy with the first draft and sets out to correct the record of her life, and Anne ends up going along. The two women, different in age and temperament, form a bond that changes how each of them sees her own future.

Shirley MacLaine plays Harriet and Amanda Seyfried plays Anne, with Anne Heche, Thomas Sadoski, Philip Baker Hall and Adina Porter among the credited cast of thirty-two. Mark Pellington directed from a screenplay by Stuart Ross Fink; the film sits between The Mothman Prophecies and Nostalgia in the director's filmography of six features. Released in March 2017, it runs 108 minutes.

The film is a comedy-drama with a modest profile. It took in about 2 million dollars worldwide, a small figure for a theatrical release. On IMDb it holds a 6.6 rating from 378 votes, while the critics' score stands at 4.9 from 94 reviews, so audiences rated it more kindly than reviewers did.