The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry is a 2021 American comedy-drama film directed by Hans Canosa and written by Gabrielle Zevin, based on the 2014 novel of the same name by Gabrielle Zevin. The film stars Kunal Nayyar as A.J. Fikry, a widowed bookstore owner whose life is turned upside down when he finds a rare first edition of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart” in a library book drop. The film was released in the United States on October 1, 2021, by Bleecker Street.
The film has received generally positive reviews from critics, with praise for Nayyar’s performance and Canosa’s direction. On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 72%, based on 102 reviews, with an average rating of 6.5/10. Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 61 out of 100, based on 28 critics, indicating “generally favorable reviews”. Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of “B+” on an A+ to F scale.
