Island, The

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

Bay's movie couldn't be more timely; whatever you think about this subject, you might admire his attempt to come to grips with it in a summer blockbuster.

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

It's got a hot premise, some cool sets, attractive stars and action that lets up only when it thinks you're about to surrender.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

The Island runs 136 minutes, but that's not long for a double feature. The first half of Michael Bay's new film is a spare, creepy science fiction parable, and then it shifts into a high-tech action picture. Both halves work.

New York Post Kyle Smith

Bay's best film since "The Rock."

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

The movie is more about how many things Michael Bay can smash up -- lots. That might not be a talent most people respect, but it gets through to people anyway, and here Bay does it exceptionally well.

The New York Times Dana Stevens

Glossy, witty eye candy with some moderately chewy stuff in the middle. This lavish, exhaustingly kinetic film is smarter than you might expect, and at the same time dumber than it could be. It's an impressive product: a triumph of cloning that almost convinces you that it possesses a soul.

The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt

Starts off an aggressively derivative sci-fi thriller, then morphs into an above-average chase melodrama.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

Make no mistake: This not high art. But it does its job without insulting our intelligence or unpleasantly jangling our nerves.

Portland Oregonian M. E. Russell

The final third...is so overblown and anticlimactic that it finally gets you thinking about empty profundity and loose ends.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey

As the careening cars go splat, splat, splat, the director's vision of the future looks like a cheerfully mindless combination of two extremes of carnival entertainment: demolition derby and whack-a-mole.

Premiere Glenn Kenny

Scarlett Johansson looks lovely and hasn't much to do besides that, McGregor only starts having fun when he's playing the "original" of his clone.

Boston Globe Wesley Morris

Bay's strength as a filmmaker, the reason his superficial yet entertaining productions can never be completely ignored, is that he appears to lack shame. He'll blow anything up and run anybody over. The moral complexities don't matter to him. He just wants to stage spectacles, appreciate very good-looking people, and assert his cowboy aesthetic.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

There's enough fun to be had that it's almost possible to ignore the stupidity of the story and the cavity that replaces character development.

Village Voice Dennis Lim

This is pure essence of Bay--it's big, it's loud, it has no context, and if you show up tanked, I'm sure it's really quite poetic.

Variety Justin Chang

Frenetic actioner about refugees from a genetic cloning plant starts off intriguingly, burns up its ideas in the first hour and pads out the rest with joltingly repetitive action sequences.

Slate David Edelstein

There is nothing wrong with the action sequences beyond their sheer length and number. They're in the "Road Warrior" mode: hyper-fast and vicious.

Empire Olly Richards

Like its slack-jawed clones, The Island is full of energy and incredibly pretty but burdened with only the minimum of smarts.

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

The Island walks a weird, wobbly line between being stupid, falsely fattened-up entertainment and a picture that just might have possibly been made by a person with a brain -- a scrambled one, but a brain nonetheless.

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

Unfortunately, The Island grows dumber as it goes along, gradually disintegrating into a generic good-versus-evil spectacular that not only defies all known laws of gravity and physics, but also suffers from the lack of morality that plagues Bay's films.

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

Like "Mr. and Mrs. Smith," The Island is the kind of suicidal high-concept movie increasingly prevalent these days: a film so thoroughly pre-conceived and pre-sold that most audiences know more about what's going on than the characters do for half the movie.

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

Chases, crashes and explosions are thick on the land in the second half of this movie, but though they are expertly done, their size, frequency and increasing disconnection from what was once a coherent story leave you feeling pummeled rather than exhilarated.

USA Today Claudia Puig

This frenzied fiesta of firepower is about cloning people for spare parts, but the movie is a clone itself. Possessing no new ideas, it reworks and borrows from such films as "Blade Runner," "The Matrix" and "Logan's Run."

Chicago Reader Andrea Gronvall

Steve Buscemi supplies the only spark of intelligent life in this numbingly flat universe, despite the fancy gadgets, the high-speed chases, and a skyscraper collision reminiscent of the World Trade Center attacks.

Time Richard Schickel

For all the menace of its techno-prattle, its implicit boosts for humanism and its swell production design, the picture is finally a bore. Sci-fi was more powerful when its special effects were cheap and crude, its ideas simple but potently stated.

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

The Island could be read as a metaphor for societal ills (commercialization, conformity, pharmaceutical overkill) if it weren't so shamelessly dumb. And dumb it is.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

For a slick pop entertainment, more than the usual quotient of timely ideas rattle around between the relentless product placements and futuristic geegaws.

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

The Island begins with a whimper of interest as a cool-hued, cautionary exploration of the ethics of cloning, and ends, in a hail of product placement, with a dumb bang.

Dallas Observer Bill Gallo

As usual, Hollywood hitmeister Bay is more interested in blowing stuff up than in addressing deep questions like the morality of science and the false myths of civilization, and these explosions go on for over two hours.

LA Weekly Scott Foundas

Nary an original idea abounds in The Island.

Chicago Tribune Allison Benedikt

Classic Bay, except it's missing the crass director's fine-tuned rhythm, his feel for adrenaline, his breakneck edits and sense of humor.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

The best thing about The Island is this: Ewan McGregor and Scarlett Johansson, buffed and dressed in sparkling white, wondering how and when to kiss each other.

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

The first half is high-quality science fiction, the rest is a high-tech chase adventure with a gleeful yen for destructive thrills.

Film Threat Michael Ferraro

What makes this movie so inadequate is that there are some moments in it that could have been really worth watching.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Nathan Rabin

An overblown science-fiction epic in which ostensibly unthinking, unfeeling stem-cell-like entities not only think and feel, but look and act like glamorous movie stars.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

A borrowed idea -- hello, "Blade Runner," hi there, "Matrix" -- but an idea nonetheless.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

Comes on like an overproduced coma, and leaves you comatose by the end. In between are 127 minutes of intermittent chaos that feel like a lifetime.

Austin Chronicle Marrit Ingman

If you like "Maxim," you will love The Island. It is glossy. It is expensive. It has lots of slick ads for Aquafina and Cadillac.

Washington Post Ann Hornaday

If you find yourself at "The Island" I have only three words of advice: Vote yourself off.