The New Guy 2002

Critics score:
7 / 100

Reviews provided by RottenTomatoes

Renee Graham, Boston Globe: So wrongheaded that this one couldn't even have looked good on paper. Read more

Terry Lawson, Detroit Free Press: In The New Guy, even the bull gets recycled. Read more

Charles Savage, Miami Herald: This is nothing but familiar territory. Read more

Richard Roeper, Ebert & Roeper: [L]ame and unnecessary. Read more

Roger Moore, Orlando Sentinel: The same old lame high school screen comedy garbage, rehashed for a new generation of suckers. Read more

Steven Rea, Philadelphia Inquirer: Every so often a movie comes along that confirms one's worse fears about civilization as we know it. The New Guy is one of them. Read more

Susan Stark, Detroit News: Read more

Elvis Mitchell, New York Times: The New Guy does have a heart. Now, if it only had a brain. Read more

Gene Seymour, Newsday: An unintentional parody of every teen movie made in the last five years. Read more

Jonathan Foreman, New York Post: Uneven, with long sections that are completely unfunny. Read more

Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader: It isn't very good, but it doesn't seem to care, which turns out to be rather refreshing. Read more

Eli Sanders, Seattle Times: The film's thoroughly recycled plot and tiresome jokes ... drag the movie down. Read more

Eleanor Ringel Gillespie, Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Never gets on the good foot. Read more

Nathan Rabin, AV Club: A comedy just funny enough to make viewers wish it were far funnier. Read more

Michael Wilmington, Chicago Tribune: This is a truly awful movie, made from one of the worst scripts in memory. The New Guy has been on the shelf for more than a year, and it's clear the reason for the long wait wasn't perfectionism. More likely, it was embarrassment. Read more

Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly: Qualls moves his marionette body around with a true clown's effervescence, and he does rubber-faced parodies of youth cool that are just what youth cool deserves. Read more

Rick Groen, Globe and Mail: An occasional one-liner rises to the level of near-wit... Most everything else ranges from routine to heavy-handed. Read more

Rasmi Simhan, Dallas Morning News: Would you laugh if a tuba-playing dwarf rolled down a hill in a trash can? Do you chuckle at the thought of an ancient librarian whacking a certain part of a man's body? If you answered yes, by all means enjoy The New Guy. Read more

Mark Olsen, L.A. Weekly: Written, flatly, by David Kendall and directed, barely, by There's Something About Mary co-writer Ed Decter. Read more

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times: It makes little sense, fails as often as it succeeds, and yet is not hateful and is sometimes quite cheerfully original. Read more

Carla Meyer, San Francisco Chronicle: Lame, haphazard teen comedy. Read more

Geoff Pevere, Toronto Star: There's no getting around the fact that this is Revenge Of The Nerds Revisited -- again. Read more

Robert Koehler, Variety: Distinguished by certain rodent-like features, Qualls is a bargain-basement, pre-adult version of David Spade -- and becomes just as tiresome. Read more