Our Idiot Brother Is Likeable Enough

Zach Galifianakis polarizes critics

(NEWSER) - Is Due Date this year’s Hangover? Not really, the critics say; it’s more “Planes, Trains, and Automobiles for the road rage generation,” writes Elizabeth Weitzman in the New York Daily News . Reviews are mixed, with only 40% of critics liking it but 75% of fans approving at Rotten Tomatoes :

• It’s a “recipe for nutso fun,” writes Peter Travers in Rolling Stone . Zach Galifianakis and Robert Downey Jr. “gift Due Date with something rare in any kind of movie: a soul.”

Familiar Carrey antics seem tired in positivity flick

(NEWSER) - Yes Man, a Jim Carrey comedy about a guy who can’t say no, is “too sluggish and slapdash a vehicle for its star’s prodigious wackiness,” writes AO Scott in the New York Times. “Carrey looks too grown up, too tired to plunge into the reckless silliness that the story demands, and the story doesn’t really demand enough of it.” More»

Critics mixed on man-child laffer

(NEWSER) - The "shamelessly stoopid, proudly profane R-rated comedy” Role Models, the story of two immature men forced to take care of kids, is “killer funny,” writes Peter Travers in Rolling Stone. But other critics aren’t so sure. “A lot of Role Models is plain old tin,” says Michael Phillips in the Chicago Tribune. More»

Fans surf web for trailers, ignore esteemed critics

(NEWSER) - Gone are the days when film critics swayed the culture and sparked serious debate, Anne Thompson laments in Variety. None of her college film students can name a critic besides Roger Ebert, though all are intense cinematic aficionados. Instead, most turn to review roundup sites, or “get their movie info straight from the studio marketing departments.” More»

Critic gives thumbs up to imminent return

(NEWSER) - Roger Ebert—beset by a series of serious health ailments in recent years—will soon resume reviewing films, he wrote in a letter to Chicago Sun-Times readers. The critic was diagnosed with thyroid cancer in 2002; since then he’s undergone several surgeries, including a tracheotomy that cost him his voice, Editor and Publisher reports. But he’ll put pen to paper once again, perhaps as early as this month. More»