Pacific Rim 2013

Richard Corliss, TIME Magazine: You get 45 minutes of awesome encased in 90 minutes of yawnsome. Read more

Jocelyn Noveck, Associated Press: Though it's made by an obviously gifted director and will likely please devotees of the genre, it ultimately feels very short on character and long on noise, noise, noise. Read more

A.O. Scott, New York Times: Some of those catchphrases are mildly clever. The lab coat mumbo-jumbo is amusing. The noble sentiments touch sweet chords. And who does not delight in seeing a robot punch a dinosaur every now and then - or pretty much constantly for two hours? Read more

Rex Reed, New York Observer: You could make another film for half the budget in the time it takes to roll the end credits for CGI imaging. There's stuff to look at, but doesn't anybody care that it doesn't make a word of sense? Read more

Joe Morgenstern, Wall Street Journal: My head is still ringing, and hurting, from long stretches of this aliens vs. robots extravaganza that are no better than the worst brain-pounders of the genre. Read more

Claudia Puig, USA Today: This is Godzilla meets Transformers, with elements of the lesser Star Wars movies, all awash in thunderously loud, non-stop demolition. Read more

Soren Anderson, Seattle Times: Godzilla, eat your heart out. Read more

Justin Chang, Variety: The squarest, clunkiest and certainly loudest movie of director Guillermo del Toro's career, a crushed-metal orgy that plays like an extended 3D episode of "Mighty Morphin Power Rangers" on very expensive acid. Read more

A.A. Dowd, AV Club: For all its expensive grandeur, almost too epic even for the vast canvases of IMAX, Pacific Rim is unmistakably a Del Toro creation. Read more

Bill Goodykoontz, Arizona Republic: It's big and loud and kind of dumb and predictable. The difference is that, in del Toro's hands, it's meant to be. Read more

Ty Burr, Boston Globe: A titanic sci-fi action fantasy that has been invested, against all expectations, with a heart, a brain, and something approximating a soul. Read more

J. R. Jones, Chicago Reader: Another marathon of cacophony and cliche. Read more

Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune: It's closer to the hammering "Transformers" aesthetic than expected. Yet the weirdness around the edges saves it from impersonality. Read more

Tom Long, Detroit News: Del Toro is reveling in blockbuster cliches at the same time he's pounding them into the pavement, and somehow that self-consciousness lets us all in on the joke. Read more

Cary Darling, Fort Worth Star-Telegram/DFW.com: The fights are well-staged and there's just enough interstitial humanity among boxing matches to keep things from getting monotonous. Read more

Chris Nashawaty, Entertainment Weekly: That's exactly what the film feels like: a 48-year-old kid playing with gigantic action figures in the world's most expensive sandbox. Unfortunately, his deep-rooted passion never quite makes the leap from his imagination to the screen. Read more

Jordan Hoffman, Film.com: They don't let 14 year-old boys direct multi-million dollar feature films, but somehow Guillermo Del Toro has channeled the interests, attitudes and fears from that mindset with a clarity that far surpasses contemporaries like Michael Bay. Read more

Wesley Morris, Grantland: Del Toro is a dreamer. He's a visionary. If you give him a pile of money to make enormous robots fight enormous monsters at the end of civilization, he will work to make Pacific Rim a movie that makes you feel all the enormousness. Read more

Todd McCarthy, Hollywood Reporter: A better-and-smarter-than-average humans-vs.-monsters spectacular. Read more

Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times: In a field rife with impostors and poseurs, Del Toro, like his mentors, is the real deal. It's good to have him working his magic again. Read more

Randy Myers, San Jose Mercury News: "Pacific Rim" creates its own language and its own mythology, and the result is one gloriously entertaining vision that leaves us in wide-eyed wonder. Read more

Rene Rodriguez, Miami Herald: There are long sequences in this movie that merit that most overused of terms: "Awesome." Read more

Rafer Guzman, Newsday: It lasts more than two hours. And there is nothing endearing about it. Read more

Anthony Lane, New Yorker: It is possible to applaud Pacific Rim for the efficacy of its business model while deploring the tale that has been engendered -- long, loud, dark, and very wet. You might as well watch the birth of an elephant. Read more

Stephen Whitty, Newark Star-Ledger: If you're 10 years old, or just want to feel that way for a couple of hours, "Pacific Rim" provides everything you need except the Twizzlers. Read more

Ian Buckwalter, NPR: Monsters, robots, grand heroism and a few clever jokes: Sounds like a perfect Saturday afternoon to me. Read more

Joe Neumaier, New York Daily News: As gripping as watching a Transformer toy battle in a bathtub with a rubber dinosaur. Read more

Lou Lumenick, New York Post: The extinction of mankind has loomed again and again over Hollywood blockbusters the past couple of years, though never anywhere near as entertainingly as in "Pacific Rim.'' Read more

Michael Sragow, Orange County Register: All the unpredictability of professional wrestling plus the magic of synchronized Stairmasters -- that's what I got out of the vaunted spectacle of Pacific Rim. Read more

Steven Rea, Philadelphia Inquirer: Pacific Rim looks great. It's one of the rare 3-D features that probably delivers more in the large-screen, stereoscopic format - severed Kaiju limbs, comin' at ya! Read more

James Berardinelli, ReelViews: It's the perfect summer spectacle, with giant robots pounding on monsters, monsters stomping on cities, and the kind of mayhem that only big theaters with big screens and big sound systems can truly convey. Read more

Richard Roeper, Richard Roeper.com: A ridiculously entertaining (and often just plain ridiculous) monster-robot movie that plays like that "Rock 'em Sock 'em Robots" game from the 1960s. Read more

Peter Travers, Rolling Stone: Pacific Rim, thank the gods of cinema, is the work of a humanist ready to banish cynicism for compassion. Read more

Andrew O'Hehir, Salon.com: I was having so much fun I lost track of where the line between good-stupid and bad-stupid might lie. Read more

Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle: Inadvertently makes the case that extinction might not be so bad... If this is the best we can do in terms of movies - if something like this can speak to the soul of audiences - maybe we should just turn over the cameras to the alien dinosaurs Read more

Dana Stevens, Slate: Pacific Rim's ability to make monster-walloping feel fun again will no doubt make Atlantic Seaboard (or maybe Mediterranean Coastal Region) as inevitable a follow-up as the return of the Kaiju through that pesky underwater portal. Read more

Colin Covert, Minneapolis Star Tribune: While the concept isn't original enough to make this an evolutionary leap for the genre, it's a glorious tribute to B-movie fire and fury. Read more

Joe Williams, St. Louis Post-Dispatch: The movie is an eyeful, especially in 3-D, but even with humans at the helms of the machines, it's a hollow exercise in homage. Read more

Christopher Orr, The Atlantic: Its visual achievements notwithstanding, Pacific Rim's greatest breakthrough may be that it's the first Hollywood blockbuster to sport a title less descriptive of its plot than of its intended market. Read more

Liam Lacey, Globe and Mail: After a long cycle of action movies in which the protagonists spend most of their downtime introspecting about their heroic obligations, Pacific Rim is something different: a heart-warming team-building exercise. Read more

Peter Howell, Toronto Star: Even if you smirk at the plot conceit of mind-linked humans inside skyscraping robots fighting blockbuster sea beasts, the technical prowess on display can't help but impress. Read more

Alonso Duralde, TheWrap: Whenever the jaegers and the kaiju throw down in Pacific Rim, it's at night in the pouring rain - unless they're both at the bottom of the ocean. What's the point, exactly, of cutting-edge CG monsters filmed in a way where we can barely see them? Read more

Tom Huddleston, Time Out: If Del Toro is pitching for an audience of 12-year-old boys (and we do mean boys: this is old-school macho), he's done a bang-up job. Read more

Keith Uhlich, Time Out: Though everything we see is pure, pleasurable comic-book absurdity, Del Toro somehow lends a plausible humanity to the proceedings, one lacking in most of this summer's city-destroying blockbusters. Read more

Stephanie Zacharek, Village Voice: Pacific Rim is just the kind of big-ticket sci-fi adventure you'd want del Toro to make -- provided you'd want him to make one at all. Read more

David Edelstein, New York Magazine/Vulture: It's as if Del Toro neuro-linked with a robot and then couldn't figure out how to work the controls -- and so watched impotently as the machine made the major creative decisions. Read more

Ann Hornaday, Washington Post: That humanistic touch is pure del Toro, and it makes all the difference in Pacific Rim, whose own whirring, glowing heart doesn't belong to any machine but to the director himself. Read more