Cowboys & Aliens a Bore

Daniel Craig, Harrison Ford can't quite save it
By Matt Cantor,  Newser Staff
Posted Jul 29, 2011 11:13 AM CDT

You’d think a movie called Cowboys and Aliens could at least hold your attention--but though the acting is good, there’s not much else to keep things interesting.

  • The film is “chockfull of elements from classic oaters—a posse, a dusty round-up, saloon stand-offs—as well as monster flick staples like abductions, experiments and explosions, and still nothing very exciting happens,” writes Joe Neumaier in the New York Daily News.

  • Sure, “it looks slick, pricey and starry—Indiana Jones teams up with James Bond for a gunfight with space demons,” notes Peter Travers in Rolling Stone. “But even Harrison Ford and Daniel Craig can't save a movie that's all concept, no content.”
  • Director Jon Favreau “wavers uncertainly between goofy pastiche and seriousness in a movie that wastes its title and misses the opportunity to play with, you know, ideas about the western and science-fiction horror,” observes Manohla Dargis in the New York Times.
  • But the Hollywood Reporter calls the movie a “solid success. For a tentpole Comic-Con movie, this one devotes a gratifying amount of time to character,” writes Kirk Honeycutt.
(More movie review stories.)

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