Critical response
On review website Rotten Tomatoes, Erin Brockovich holds an approval rating of 87% based on 194 reviews, with an average rating of 7.8/10. The critics consensus reads, "Taking full advantage of Julia Roberts's considerable talent and appeal, Erin Brockovich overcomes a few character and plot issues to deliver a smart, thoughtful, and funny legal drama." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted score of 73 out of 100 based on 37 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A" on an A+ to F scale.
In his review for The New York Observer, Andrew Sarris wrote, "We get the best of independent cinema and the best of mainstream cinema all in one package. Erin Brockovich, like Wonder Boys right before it, makes the year 2000 seem increasingly promising for movies". Newsweek's David Ansen began his review with, "Julia Roberts is flat-out terrific in Erin Brockovich." Furthermore, he wrote, "Roberts has wasted her effervescence on many paltry projects, but she hits the jackpot this time. Erin, single mother of three, a former Miss Wichita who improbably rallies a community to take on a multi-billion-dollar corporation, is the richest role of her career, simultaneously showing off her comic, dramatic and romantic chops". Rolling Stone's Peter Travers wrote, "Roberts shows the emotional toll on Erin as she tries to stay responsible to her children and to a job that has provided her with a first taste of self-esteem". Robert Philpot of Fort Worth Star-Telegram gave it a three-and-a-half out of four rating, describing it as "a movie that uses a wicked sense of humor to examine serious themes. It's the kind of David-vs.-Goliath story told in The Insider and A Civil Action, but it drops the self-importance of those movies and replaces it with a refreshingly feisty attitude". In his review for Entertainment Weekly, Owen Gleiberman gave the film a "B+" rating and wrote, "It's a delight to watch Roberts, with her flirtatious sparkle and undertow of melancholy, ricochet off Finney's wonderfully jaded, dry-as-beef-jerky performance as the beleaguered career attorney who knows too much about the loopholes of his profession to have much faith left in it". Sight & Sound's Andrew O'Hehir wrote, "Perhaps the best thing about this relaxed and supremely engaging film (for my money the best work either the director or his star has ever done) is that even its near-fairytale resolution doesn't offer a magical transformation". Donald Munro of Fresno Bee gave it a "B+" rating and said, "We've indulged in the bash-the-big-bad-corporation genre before with such upstanding films as Silkwood, Norma Rae and A Civil Action -- but never have we had such rollicking fun doing it". In her review for The Village Voice, Amy Taubin wrote, "What's pretty original about the picture is that it focuses an investigative drama based on a true story around a comic performance".
However, film critic Roger Ebert gave the film a two-star review, writing, "There is obviously a story here, but Erin Brockovich doesn't make it compelling. The film lacks focus and energy, the character development is facile and thin". In his review for The New York Times, A.O. Scott wrote, "After proving, for about 40 minutes, what a marvelous actress she can be, Ms. Roberts spends the next 90 content to be a movie star. As the movie drags on, her performance swells to bursting with moral vanity and phony populism". Time's Richard Corliss found the film to be "slick, grating and false. We bet it makes a bundle".
Writing about the film for its twentieth anniversary, critic Scott Tobias wrote in The Guardian, "With this film and Traffic the same year, Soderbergh would prove to be a master at connecting the dots without making it seem like an information dump. In Erin Brockovich, Roberts is the spoonful of sugar that makes the medicine go down: as we learn about different types of chromium, the range of medical abnormalities, and the ins and outs of real estate documents and toxicology reports, she's ripping some poor suit with invective or using her body as a diversionary tactic. It never feels difficult to sort through the facts – and, more crucially, the emotional stakes of the case are never lost in them. That's Brockovich's gift. And that's Roberts', too."
