Miss You
The Setup: Two Strangers, One Funeral, No Easy Answers
Miss You arrives as a 2026 HBO Films release starring Allison Janney and Andrew Rannells in what amounts to a two-character grief story set in New Mexico. Janney plays Diane, a sharp-tongued widow forced to plan her husband's funeral with Jamie—the personal assistant of her estranged son—who shows up to help and immediately becomes the person she resents most in the room. That's it. That's the engine. No plot machinery, no family melodrama unfolding across multiple timelines. Just two people who have no reason to trust each other, stuck in the same house, sorting through resentment while everyone else keeps their distance.
Director Jim Rash—best known as an actor, but who won an Oscar for co-writing The Descendants in 2012—doesn't reach for big emotional moments. He lets the awkwardness breathe. The silences matter. The way Diane pushes back when Jamie offers comfort. A scene where they argue about funeral program fonts becomes genuinely funny, then isn't, and Rash never explains why. He just leaves it there. That tonal control—the willingness to sit in discomfort—is where the film earns its keep.
Cast, Production, and Why This Matters for HBO Max
The film debuted on May 29, 2026 on HBO Max and runs 97 to 98 minutes—a compact watch that doesn't overstay its welcome. Janney has spent decades proving that a single look can do more work than most actors manage in a full scene, and here she plays someone actively resisting comfort. Rannells—known for Girls and The Book of Mormon on Broadway—plays someone who keeps reading the room wrong, repeatedly. Supporting roles go to Bonnie Hunt, Suzy Nakamura, Oscar Nunez, and Lisa Schurga, a lineup that suggests Rash knew exactly what ensemble texture he wanted to build. Nobody overwhelms the central two-hander; they orbit it.
As an HBO streaming release, there's no box-office data—which is standard for this model and doesn't diminish what HBO Films has built. The production companies attached (MediaBrigade and Ośrodek Kultury i Sztuki we Wrocławiu alongside HBO Max) suggest an international footprint that's unusual for what is otherwise a very American story. Hard to say if that shaped anything visible on screen, but it's worth noting if you're tracking where the film actually came from.
What Critics Are Saying—and What the Performances Actually Deliver
Early critical reception lands solidly in favorable territory. According to Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an 87% approval rating across 23 critics with an average score of 7.5 out of 10—not a unanimous rave, but a clear signal that reviewers found something worth recommending. Metacritic puts it at 62 out of 100, which reads as solid mixed-to-positive for a film this quiet in scale.
What's striking is how consistently reviews circle back to the same thing: the performances. Screen Rant's review describes the film as a reminder that "watching actors act" can be its own reward—which sounds like backhanded praise until you realize Janney and Rannells are the ones acting. The Arts Fuse called it a film that "finds unexpected emotional depth" in a funeral-set premise, which tracks with what Rash seems to be going for.
Janney is the gravitational center. Diane isn't softened by loss—she's blunt, occasionally cruel in the way grieving people actually are, resistant to the kind of comfort that Jamie keeps trying to offer. Rannells plays someone who has learned to read rooms quickly and still gets this one wrong. I kept thinking about how little the film explains; it just lets their dynamic unspool. Some critics flagged moments in the second half as overwrought, and they're not wrong—the dramatic beats occasionally push harder than the material needs. But Janney carries it through. That's the real story here.
Where to Stream Miss You Right Now
Miss You is currently available on HBO Max, where it debuted on May 29, 2026. If you're a Max subscriber, it's included with your existing plan—no rental fee, no upsell. Since it's an HBO Films production, Max is the natural home for it.
Streaming rights shift over time, so Movie OTT's where-to-watch tracker is worth checking for the most current picture across every platform carrying the title. The widget at the top of their page updates regularly as titles move between services. If you're not a Max subscriber yet, it's worth knowing that HBO often licenses titles to other platforms down the line—so if Miss You surfaces elsewhere, Movie OTT will flag it.
If You've Liked These, Miss You Lands in a Similar Zone
Think of films like Nebraska (2013) or The Farewell (2019)—character-driven stories where grief and dark humor share the same sentence without either one canceling the other out. If you're the kind of viewer who can sit with two people in a room and let a story unspool slowly, this one rewards patience. If you need momentum, plot machinery, or a tidy emotional resolution, you'll probably find yourself frustrated.
Janney alone is worth the runtime. Rash has made something genuinely felt here, a film that treats grief as the messy, darkly funny, occasionally absurd experience it actually is—not as something that needs to be resolved or explained away. That's rare for a 2026 release. Most films want to tie things up neatly. This one doesn't.
FAQ
Is Miss You a true story? No. It's an original screenplay by Jim Rash, though the grief and family dynamics it portrays are drawn from recognizably human experience rather than any specific source.
Who directed Miss You? Jim Rash wrote and directed it. Before this, he co-wrote the Oscar-winning screenplay for The Descendants (2012), so he knows how to handle grief with dark comedy woven through it.
How long is Miss You? Approximately 97 to 98 minutes. A single-sitting watch. Released in 2026 as part of the HBO Films slate.
What's the rating? The film has a 0/10 rating in its IMDb listing, though that appears to be a data error rather than a reflection of critical reception. Rotten Tomatoes shows 87% approval across critics, which is the more reliable indicator.
Next step: Add Miss You to your Max watchlist this week, or use the Movie OTT where-to-watch widget to confirm current streaming availability on your preferred platform.
