Fast Five Is Furiously Fun

Critics entertained by dumb, loud caper flick
By Kevin Spak,  Newser Staff
Posted Apr 29, 2011 12:31 PM CDT

Oh look, it’s yet another The Fast and the Furious sequel. Surely critics will summarily lambaste it and move on. Wait, what’s this? They like it? It has a 77% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes? It’s all true. Here’s what they’re saying:

  • “Bless me father of all critic gods for I have sinned: I liked Fast Five,” confesses Peter Travers in Rolling Stone. “I watched the cars smashing in IMAX and smiled.” Sure the acting is terrible, but “the cast has relaxed into their own ineptitude. They're enjoying the whole crazy business. And you will too.”
  • Fast Five is, so far, the most honest Hollywood movie of the year,” and the most fun to boot, writes Wesley Morris of the Boston Globe. Vin Diesel and the Rock “are the Pacino and De Niro of absurdly muscled, totally bald, racially mixed action heroes.”

  • “The movie is made of sheer, preposterous, and nonstop impossible action, muscular macho guys, hot chicks,” and inept bad guys, writes Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times. “That can be amusing for some people, not so much for me. What I missed were laughs.” The only really funny part was at the end, when they urged people not to try these stunts at home.
  • Kyle Smith of the New York Post has one teensy little complaint: “Until the finale, it has no car chases to speak of,” just a lot of dull caper-plotting. It’s only two hours long “because it takes that long to read every item in the cliché dictionary.”
(More Fast & Furious stories.)

Get the news faster.
Tap to install our app.
X
Install the Newser News app
in two easy steps:
1. Tap in your navigation bar.
2. Tap to Add to Home Screen.

X