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Critic Reviews

A mess.

-David DenbyFull Review

The most indelible performance in the film is not, strictly speaking, a performance at all. Rather it is Woola, a six-legged Martian hound who rather resembles a cross between a bulldog and a fetal gila monster.

-Christopher OrrFull Review

A bloated sci-fi epic from Disney that's made watchable by swell effects, passable performances and those little dashes of humor that reassure us that the filmmakers know this is all a lark.

-Roger MooreFull Review

The reported $250 million price tag for John Carter gives one pause. I suppose one could argue that masterpieces have no price. Then again, John Carter is no masterpiece.

-Peter RainerFull Review

Where John Carter continually gets it right is pacing, levity, and breadth of story.

-Laremy LegelFull Review

Whenever the fighting stops and two people have to stand and talk, all the air goes out of everything. Suddenly it feels as if we're in an empty theater, watching a dusty old sword-and-sandal epic.

-Stephen WhittyFull Review

It isn't bad so much as innocuous, $250-million worth of innocuous, framed by a decent start and a solid finish but sagging through the long middle like a cheap mattress.

-Rick GroenFull Review

Though messy and overlong, it's an enjoyable throwback to the movie spectacles of a more innocent age.

-Rafer GuzmanFull Review

"John Carter" is a huge bore.

-Tom LongFull Review

Gets off to such an incoherent start that it takes almost the entire, interminable two-hour-plus running time to catch up.

-Ann HornadayFull Review

Suffers from a convoluted plot and an anticlimactic resolution, but hits enough high notes along the way to be enjoyable.

-James BerardinelliFull Review

The villains are overwrought and the design of Mars is surprisingly bland.

-Claudia PuigFull Review

This middle section, in which both Carter and the audience get a crash course in the politics, history, and theology of the Red Planet, is the movie at its most imaginative and most fun.

-Dana StevensFull Review

There's nothing to see, nothing to think about, nothing to care about, and nothing to feel, just emptiness. The emptiness is never filled over the course of 132 long, barren minutes.

-Mick LaSalleFull Review

Messy and chaotic ... but also colorful and kind of fun.

-A.O. ScottFull Review

A deadly heaviness brings Disney's would-be epic down.

-Joe MorgensternFull Review

It starts with a great story - of love and politics, time travel and mystical pathways between planets - badly sucked dry.

-Betsy SharkeyFull Review

All of these characters, and the richly detailed backdrops, are utterly immersive and lifelike - even without the completely unnecessary 3-D.

-Ian BuckwalterFull Review

It's hard to believe Pixar's founder would have signed off on this project. The film is as overcomplicated, bloated and crash-prone as a bad-old-days Microsoft release.

-Colin CovertFull Review

There's something generic about the digitally rendered Martians (whatever their stripe and skin tone), and there's a corniness to the dialogue that keeps the audience from any kind of emotional attachment to the Tharks and Zodangans and their ilk.

-Steven ReaFull Review

Against the odds, "John Carter'' is itself pretty amazing - an epic pulp saga that slowly rises to the level of its best imitations and wins you over by degrees.

-Ty BurrFull Review

"John Carter" may not be a perfect movie, but it's one where you can safely plunk down your money, grab your box of popcorn and come away reasonably satisfied when the closing credits roll.

-Charlie McCollumFull Review

It looks as if Disney simply borrowed and recycled the sets of Prince of Persia and Gladiator, adding leftover props from The Phantom Menace and Cowboys and Aliens.

-Peter HowellFull Review

The books offer enough material for several movies, which seems to be the root of the problem here: the movie is so overloaded with exposition that the situations have little room to develop.

-Ben SachsFull Review

Proceeding in fits and starts, and flats and stops, John Carter has some zesty set pieces but no rooting interest.

-Richard CorlissFull Review

While "John Carter" is undeniably silly, sprawling and easy to make fun of, it's also playful, genuinely epic and absolutely comfortable being what it is. In this genre, those are virtues as rare as a cave of gold.

-Joe NeumaierFull Review

A cheesy looking (the 3-D adds nothing to the picture) quasi-epic filled with dullish characters and chaotically staged action scenes.

-Soren AndersonFull Review

The major problem here is one of rooting interest. I hate to sound like a mogul, or a focus group ho, but at the center of this picture is a flat, inexpressive protagonist played by a flat, inexpressive actor.

-Michael PhillipsFull Review

The action sequences are generally well-executed, but they're too much of a muchness. CGI makes them seem too facile and not tactile enough.

-Roger EbertFull Review

You can feel Stanton struggling to bring the confidence, wit and style of "Wall-E" and "Finding Nemo" to bear upon this leviathan, but he can't quite pull it off.

-Andrew O'HehirFull Review


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