Gentlemen Broncos 2009

A.O. Scott, At the Movies: It doesn't have any kind of emotional center. Read more

Mary F. Pols, MSN Movies: If you're past the age of worrying about detention, it's an endurance test. How many grotesques, morons and creeps can you watch twist in a barely moving narrative wind? Read more

David Edelstein, New York Magazine/Vulture: The best part is Jemaine Clement as Benjamin's grandiose genre hero, Dr. Ronald Chevalier. Even if you love him on Flight of the Conchords, you'll be unprepared for his genius -- and charisma. Read more

Sean O'Neal, AV Club: Every frame of Hess' new film...is crammed with so much deliberate tackiness that it borders on exhausting self-parody. Read more

Randy Cordova, Arizona Republic: At one level, it is pretty bad. Then, on the other level, it is downright horrible. Unless you're an entertainment masochist, neither is very much fun. Read more

Gary Goldstein, Chicago Tribune: Satire aside, what the oddball folks here never feel is real, despite the filmmakers' claims of autobiographical parallels. Read more

Tom Long, Detroit News: Don't pay money to see it, don't waste your time if it comes on cable; you might not even want to bother reading the rest of this review. Read more

Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly: The audience may have bought the act in Napoleon Dynamite. But this time, the act bombs. Read more

Amy Nicholson, I.E. Weekly: Fun material buried under a gross residue -- not just the projectile vomiting or the snake diarrhea, but the 'shlick, shlick' sound as Benjamin gives an over-lotioned hand massage Read more

Stephen Whitty, Newark Star-Ledger: The filmmakers must have been the most sophisticated wits in the BYU cafeteria. I bet they did really funny impressions of the foreign-exchange students behind their backs. Read more

Elizabeth Weitzman, New York Daily News: Hess wrote and directed "Dynamite," and here's proof we shouldn't have rewarded him. The hollow Broncos is even more cruelly disdainful, designed primarily to scorn the pathetic lives within. Read more

Lou Lumenick, New York Post: It tests your patience even at 90 minutes. Read more

Steven Rea, Philadelphia Inquirer: Where do you go after rocket-propelled deer statuary, cyclops warriors in golf carts, and Mike White with a dubbed Irish accent? Read more

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times: Jared Hess, who made Napoleon Dynamite, a film I admit I didn't get, has made a film I don't even begin to get. Read more

Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle: The comic performance of Jemaine Clement, as the writer, is the one thing to salvage from this experience. Read more

Colin Covert, Minneapolis Star Tribune: A tedious and unfocused concoction involving science fiction, plagiarism and the nightgown industry. Read more

Liam Lacey, Globe and Mail: There's a lesson behind Gentlemen Broncos, the new film from director Jared Hess: Don't try to mock above your talent level. Read more

Peter Howell, Toronto Star: The sci-fi themed Gentlemen Broncos doesn't just visit Planet Quirk, it crash lands upon it. Read more

David Fear, Time Out: It's unfair to blame Hess solely for condescension comedy's bad aftertaste -- he's not the only perpetrator -- but his particular brand is the most graceless. Read more

David Jenkins, Time Out: This latest from writer-director Jared Hess is another unsavoury stew of kitsch juvenilia that furthers the rot that set in between his first two films... Read more

Claudia Puig, USA Today: If you didn't know otherwise, you'd swear that Gentlemen Broncos was made by a disaffected high school student -- and not a particularly talented one. Read more

Peter Debruge, Variety: With no message beyond the superficial absurdity of it all, Hess is in a precarious position to be critiquing the intellect or artistry of anyone else. Read more

Scott Foundas, Village Voice: Hess deserves credit, I suppose, for so effectively channeling his inner seven-year-old. Personally, I preferred spending two hours in the company of Spike Jonze's. Read more

John Anderson, Washington Post: What Michael Bay did for the Hollywood blockbuster with his second Transformers movie, Jared Hess has now done for the low-budget indie with Gentlemen Broncos -- namely, stain an entire genre with a sense of soulless calculation. Read more