Metacritic reviews

One hopes this is a smaller film that benefits from this moment. Many are staying in and staying safe, looking for art that will comfort them like a warm blanket. Look no further than The High Note.

This is still a light and frothy rom-com, predictable and charming in equal measure, and most comfortable when it fits the efficient mold of genre obligations. But when it wants to, it can really crank that charm up to 11.

The pleasures found in The High Note are many and often minor; Ganatra builds the film on casual chemistry between Johnson and Ross, with Harrison Jr., fresh off of his 2019 one-two punch of “Luce” and “Waves,” popping up as Johnson’s alternative foil.

The movie has its moments, some of them genuinely delightful. Still, there's a world where The High Note could have struck a stronger, deeper chord, and resonated.

It's the kind of plush, pleasurable comfort viewing that goes down as easily as a favorite artist's hits compilation.

Tracee Ellis Ross kills it as a believable soul diva in a harmonious pairing with Dakota Johnson — a shame, then, that a distracting romcom plot ends up so high in the mix.

The strength of the pair’s chemistry — with Johnson cast as the smart but starry-eyed Maggie and Ross doing a lighter spin on her own real-life mother’s mythos as the larger-than-life Grace — helps guide shaky character development, though The High Note is less successful at making its stars shine when they interact with others.

The characters’ overall niceness makes the movie pleasant in the moment—and easy to shrug off as a fantasy.

The script of The High Note, by Flora Greeson, is long on wish-fulfillment and short on inside authority, and the director, Nisha Ganatra (“Late Night”), stages it with a hit-or-miss geniality that keeps cutting corners on the story’s emotional honesty. The feel-good factor hovers over this movie like a fuzzy bland cloud.

Everything here wraps up as tidily as it does in your average Hallmark Channel movie.