Claire and Evelyn, estranged former friends, reconnect at the funeral of a mutual friend, and decide to exact revenge on their dead friend's widower for the harm he caused to Claire decades earlier.
In December 2022, it was announced that Roadside Attractions acquired North American rights to the film, which was released on March 17, 2023.[5] This was Richard Roundtree's final film to be released before his death in October 2023.[6]
Plot
Claire leaves her beloved corgie with her daughter and grandchildren so she can travel across the country to attend the funeral of her old college friend Joyce. Before the funeral service, Claire approaches Joyce's widower Howard, and bluntly informs him that she intends to kill him this weekend.
Directly after the service, Claire reconnects with Evelyn, who had been Joyce's college roommate and lover. It is revealed that Howard had wronged Claire decades ago, although the nature of the wrong isn't yet specified. She insists she is going to kill him, now that their friend is gone.
After the two friends are unsuccessful at buying a gun, Evelyn initially refuses to help Claire with her plan to kill him at the wake. Instead, she heads to her assisted living facility.
Meanwhile, at thw wake Claire reconnects with her ex-husband Ralph, whom she has not seen in years. Evelyn shows up, outs Joyce upon revealing their two and a half year relationship in NYC between junior year and beyond, so she and Claire leave together.
That evening, Ralph invites Claire to his home for dinner, where she meets his daughter and two grandsons. Afterwards, over drinks, he asks her why she left him, and she cannot bring herself to articulate the reason. Still, they have a romantic evening together and make love. But Claire slips out early in the morning with freshly cooked bacon upon Evelyn's request.
As Evelyn changed her mind about helping to kill Howard, she convinces another resident to loan them his gun by bribing him with the bacon. The gun they want to use to kill Howard turns out to be a flare gun, but she insists it will be lethal at close range.
Under the guise of meeting to apologise, Claire confronts Howard about the assault in a tense scene, insisting that he admit to raping her forty-six years previously, while pointing a flare gun—the only kind of gun they've been able to acquire—at him. However, he collapses from what Claire assumes is a heart attack before she can pull the trigger. Instead, she uses the flare gun to signal that he needs medical help.
In the hospital, it is revealed that Howard actually had a non-life-threatening anxiety attack. Claire goes into his room and describes the assault in detail, but he continues to deny it. So she tries to smother Howard to death with a pillow, but is stopped by Evelyn.
In the end, during a final confrontation between Claire, Evelyn, and Howard in the parking garage at the hospital, Howard fires a shower of expletives at the women. Then he accidentally turns into the path of another driver and dies.
After Howard's funeral, Claire reconnects again with Ralph, as she is now ready to have a potentially ongoing romance with him again.
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 75% of 79 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 6.4/10. The website's consensus reads: "Moving On fails frustratingly often to rise to the level of its leads, but Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin are entertaining company regardless of the context."[7]Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 60 out of 100, based on 18 critics, indicating "mixed or average" reviews.[8]
Peter Debruge of Variety wrote: "We've been spoiled this past decade, discovering what Fonda and Tomlin can do together. Why didn’t Hollywood see the potential of this pairing half a century earlier?"[9]
