Annie Baker is making her feature film debut as a writer and director some fifteen years after making her New York stage debut as a playwright, and I almost laughed at the déjà vu of it. “Janet Planet,” currently streaming on Max, reminds me of her plays not so much for the film’s setting, and not its basic subject, but for her similar approach to storytelling – and, above all, for the extreme and extremely varying reactions to it.
“The remarkable writer-director..announces her big-screen ambitions with stunning force,” writes Tim Grierson in Screen Daily, reflecting what seems to be the majority opinion from film critics.
“Ultimately, the movie is really boring,” writes Kaely Monahan in the Arizona Republic, a minority but not unique view.

“Janet Planet” is set in the summer of 1991, in a rural area of western Massachusetts. Eleven-year-old Lacy (Zoe Ziegler) is supposed to be spending the summer at camp, but in the first scene she calls her mother on a payphone to tell her: “I’m going to kill myself if you don’t come get me.”
Her mother Janet (Julianne Nicholson) obliges, and the rest of the two-hour movie is their summer together interrupted (as Lacy might word it) by three visitors in a row, each presented as a separate chapter. There is Janet’s taciturn boyfriend Wayne (Will Patton), only the latest apparently of her bad choices in men; Lacy advises Janet to break up with him (and she does.) Then there is Regina (Sophie Okenedo) an old friend of Janet’s and an actress who takes refuge in Jane’s house from Avi, the amiable, cerebral if cult-like director of the Bread and Puppet-like acting troupe of which Regina is a member; Regina is something of a free spirit and a freeloader, and she and Janet have a falling out. And then there is Avi himself (Elias Koteas.)
Such a summary does not do justice to “Janet Planet.” The strength and beauty of the movie is not so much what happens as what we observe, especially the portraits we piece together of both the girl and her mother. Some of this we get clearly enough in the relatively brief moments of dialogue. But mostly a viewer must extrapolate from the casual everydayness of “Janet Planet,” which moves forward through the accretion of details in the often static, prolonged moments that largely set the tone of the movie.
This is catnip for critics, whose job, after all, is to observe. In his review in the New Yorker, Justin Chang writes:
“You could call “Janet Planet” a coming-of-age story, but that would risk lumping it together with countless movies it doesn’t much resemble. It’s more a story about a child at the stage where one moves beyond the intense, almost romantic, idolization of a parent—a process that, as Baker is aware, is gradual, full of hesitations and stumbles.”
(Let me mention here that “Janet Planet” is the name of her acupuncturist practice; we see the name on the door of her office; it is also clear that to Lacy, Janet is her entire planet, or at least starts out that way.)
“To capture a process of disillusionment,” Chang continues, “requires uncommon patience, plus keen powers of observation. Hers are up to the challenge.”
The operating words here are patience and observation. Is it churlish for me to suggest that the critics who rave about this movie are (consciously or not) crediting themselves as well as Baker with such powers?
Other viewers might have less patience for the many shots in the movie that seem several seconds (or an eternity) longer than they need to be – Lacy walking down a country road to her piano lesson; practicing on her electronic keyboard at home; the characters silently riding in a car; silently eating breakfast for a long beat before anybody says anything. There were times during some lingering shots when I wasn’t sure whether my screen had frozen.
I suspect another one of Baker’s powers, this one unspoken and surely inadvertent, is to make those without the patience needed to fully appreciate her approach feel like uncultured louts.
It was during the most vibrant scene in “Janet Planet” – an outdoor performance by Avi’s troupe (reportedly, an actual company, Double Edge Theater of Ashfield, Mass.) — that I was reminded of the first play I’d seen by Annie Baker, “Circle Mirror Transformation” in 2009.

On the surface, the play, which was presented at Playwrights Horizons, is about a six-week summer acting class at a community center in the small (fictional) town of Shirley, Vermont, presented with such specificity and rigor that it was spot-on in its authenticity yet simultaneously hilarious in its subtle satire. But something else is really happening in the play: We are learning about the characters as they learn about one another in the brief moments of dialogue between the acting exercises, with their relationships and emotions shifting over time in amusing and moving ways. It was a terrific showcase for a tremendously talented cast, each of whom has become New York stage royalty (Deirdre O’Connell, Peter Friedman, Reed Birney, Heidi Schreck.) It was my introduction to Baker. It was also my introduction to her fruitful collaboration with director Sam Gold: besides “Circle Mirror Transformation,” “The Aliens,” their adaptation of “Uncle Vanya,” later “John” – and “The Flick”

I noted in passing that “Circle Mirror Transformation” could be a bit shorter, but that it worked; I was completely won over.

In 2013, I saw, “The Flick,” about a run-down movie theater in Worcester County, Massachusetts, which I also thought a tremendous showcase for its cast, with moments that were quietly breathtaking. But this time I thought it could be A LOT shorter. The running time in and of itself (three hours and 15 minutes including one intermission.) was not the issue so much as the pace. My critique was comparatively mild; so many patrons of Playwrights Horizons walked out in outrage, even actively complaining to management, that the artistic director felt forced to write a letter in response.

The next year “The Flick” won the Pulitzer Prize in Drama.

This is why I call Annie Baker a polarizing playwright. This dichotomy continues, although there is less attention to it. In 2017, Ben Brantley reviewed “The Antipodes” in the Times as “Annie Baker’s in-all-ways fabulous new play about professional fabulators in pursuit of the ultimate yarn.” Marilyn Stasio wrote in Variety: “The exercise is painful for these brain-dead writers, but pure torture for audiences. “ ( A delicious tidbit: The Times review includes a correction; the caption — inadvertently or through a mischievous underling? — had listed the play’s title as “The Antidopes”)
That year, 2017, she collected a MacArthur “Genius” award.
There are ways that viewers of “Janet Planet” have an advantage. Film promotes the visual over the verbal to begin with, and allows us, through closeups, to feel action in the smallest of movement. Even in otherwise static scenes, the movement of the camera itself, no matter how subtle, can keep us engaged. And, since it’s being streamed, you can watch it again, to catch the moments you might have missed or misunderstood. (I liked it better the second time.)

.