GAMES: GameSpot | GameFAQs MUSIC: Last.fm | MP3.com MOVIES: Metacritic | Movietome TV: TV.com
Home | About Metacritic | About Metascores | What's New | Wireless Versions | Discussion Forums | Advertising Inquiries | Contact Us | RSS
Metacritic.com: We Deal With Criticism
     Help
> Switch to Advanced Search  
Film Video/DVD Music Games TV

Film

Upcoming Release Calendar
Weekend Box Office
Film Awards & Top 10s By Year
All-Time High Scores
All-Time Low Scores
How Metascores Are Calculated
Discuss Film In Our Forums

 

Wide Releases

sort by name sort by score

Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

 

Limited Releases

sort by name sort by score

67 $9.99
75 24 City
66 Adoration
74 Afghan Star
48 Alien Trespass
56 American Violet
82 Anvil! The Story of Anvil
57 Away We Go
81 Beaches of Agnes, The
62 Big Man Japan
28 Big Shot-Caller, The
78 Boys: The Sherman Brothers' Story, The
55 Brothers Bloom, The
82 Burma VJ: Reporting from a Closed Country
xx Call of the Wild
63 Cheri
62 Cherry Blossoms
63 Dead Snow
65 Departures
18 Downloading Nancy
58 Easy Virtue
70 End of the Line, The
77 Every Little Step
64 Examined Life
80 Food, Inc.
38 Gigantic
56 Girl from Monaco, The
67 Girlfriend Experience, The
87 Gomorrah
89 Goodbye Solo
63 Great Buck Howard, The
79 Harvard Beats Yale 29-29
xx Home
82 Hunger
91 Hurt Locker, The
16 I Hate Valentine's Day
81 Il Divo
54 Is Anybody There?
71 Jerichow
58 Julia
74 Lemon Tree
36 Life is Hot in Cracktown
40 Limits of Control, The
42 Little Ashes
64 Lymelife
50 Management
57 Merry Gentleman, The
66 Moon
35 New York
62 Not Forgotten
xx Offshore
78 O'Horten
64 Outrage
40 Paris 36
54 Pontypool
71 Pressure Cooker
52 Quiet Chaos
83 Revanche
67 Rudo y Cursi
86 Seraphine
65 Sex Positive
70 Shall We Kiss?
77 Sin Nombre
59 Sleep Dealer
74 Song of Sparrows, The
54 Stoning of Soraya M., The
82 Sugar
84 Summer Hours
61 Sunshine Cleaning
28 Surveillance
42 Tennessee
63 Tetro
64 Throw Down Your Heart
80 Tokyo Sonata
63 Tokyo!
70 Tony Manero
74 Treeless Mountain
88 Tulpan
74 Two Lovers
83 Tyson
83 U2 3D
60 Under Our Skin
69 Unmistaken Child
69 Valentino: The Last Emperor
22 What Goes Up
45 Whatever Works
57 Youssou Ndour: I Bring What I Love

Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

 



Printer-Friendly Version Email This Page Discuss In Our Forums

Taxi
Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation

Taxi reviews
Critic Score
Metascore: 27 Metascore out of 100
User Score  
4.0 out of 10
based on 27 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
based on 35 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie

MPAA RATING: PG-13 for language, sensuality and brief violence

Starring Queen Latifah, Jimmy Fallon, Henry Simmons, Jennifer Esposito, Gisele Bundchen, Ana Cristina De Oliveira, Ingrid Vandebosch, and Magali Amadei

New York's fastest cabbie (Queen Latifah) uses her skills beind the wheel of her souped-up car to help an overeager undercover cop (Fallon) pursue a gand of female bank robbers. (20th Century Fox)


GENRE(S): Action  |  Comedy  
WRITTEN BY: Ben Garant
Thomas Lennon
Jim Kouf
Luc Besson (earlier screenplay)
 
DIRECTED BY: Tim Story  
RELEASE DATE: DVD: February 15, 2005 
Video: February 15, 2005 
Theatrical: October 6, 2004 
RUNNING TIME: 105 minutes, Color 
ORIGIN: USA / France 

What The Critics Said

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

63
USA Today Claudia Puig
A surprisingly funny, female-driven romp — as long as you don't question too many plot particulars.
Read Full Review
60
Empire Chris Hewitt
It's loud, it's stupid, yet against all the odds, enjoyable.
Read Full Review
50
Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt
Frivolous but fun, somewhere between a comic "French Connection" and the craziest Nascar race you never saw.
Read Full Review
50
San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle
How one likes Taxi has everything to do with how one responds to the hapless cop character, played by Jimmy Fallon.
Read Full Review
50
Boston Globe Wesley Morris
Too much of Taxi is just tired.
Read Full Review
50
Chicago Tribune Robert K. Elder
Riddled with comic potholes.
Read Full Review
50
Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey
Director Tim Story's film has two speeds: pedal-to-metal and screeching halt. The former is guaranteed to make the audience carsick, the latter to give it whiplash.
Read Full Review
40
Chicago Reader Hank Sartin
I expected this to be much funnier: Latifah coasts on her charm and Fallon seems incapable of playing an actual character.
Read Full Review
40
Los Angeles Times Carina Chocano
Full of car chases, weak jokes and scenes so meandering they make "Saturday Night Live" look like a paragon of brevity and wit.
Read Full Review
40
Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern
I haven't seen the original, but I can vouch for the clumsiness of the new version. As usual, though, Queen Latifah is an indomitable, if sometimes undirectable, comic force.
38
The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey
Very little of it works.
Read Full Review
30
The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt
This thoroughly repetitive, ill-conceived and poorly executed effort -- with an emphasis on the word "effort" -- defeats these two talented people more often than not.
Read Full Review
30
Variety Robert Koehler
Commits any number of comedic violations during an aimless pursuit of laughs.
Read Full Review
30
Village Voice Jessica Winter
Throughout this Americanization of the Luc Besson–scripted French hit, Latifah itches to check her watch, Fallon appears mortified, and only Ann-Margret mainlines any comic adrenalin.
Read Full Review
30
The New York Times Dave Kehr
A bland, half-finished film that seems to have been conceived as off-peak cable fodder.
Read Full Review
30
Dallas Observer Luke Y. Thompson
It would take the ghost of Stanley Kubrick to get great performances out of Jimmy Fallon, Queen Latifah, and supermodel Gisele Bündchen, and Tim, you're no Stanley.
Read Full Review
30
TV Guide Maitland McDonagh
Queen Latifah is a natural-born charmer, but there's only so much she can do when paired with a costar so irritating it's hard not to squirm when he's on the screen, which is most of the time.
Read Full Review
30
Washington Post Michael O'Sullivan
Goes nowhere fast.
Read Full Review
30
The Onion (A.V. Club) Nathan Rabin
Feels stitched together from bits and pieces of lame '80s buddy-cop movies.
Read Full Review
30
LA Weekly Chuck Wilson
The glitch, beyond the rote story, is that while she's an infectiously upbeat screen presence, Latifah is not, inherently, a major laugh generator, and neither, it would appear, is Fallon.
Read Full Review
25
Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez
If this is magic, I'll take "Gigli."
Read Full Review
25
Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman
An action-choked dud in which even the closing outtakes barely deserve to be left on the cutting-room floor?
Read Full Review
25
Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
In a film that is wall-to-wall idiocy, the most tiresome delusion is that car chases are funny.
Read Full Review
25
New York Daily News Jack Mathews
Bad as he is, Fallon cannot claim Taxi's worst moment. That belongs to Ann-Margret.
Read Full Review
25
Baltimore Sun Chris Kaltenbach
Taxi's only saving grace is an inexplicable, though delightful, turn by Ann-Margret as Andy's ever-tipsy mom. She's a stitch, and about 100 times better than her surrounding material.
Read Full Review
12
New York Post Megan Lehmann
This witless action comedy begins to insult the audience's intelligence from the opening scene.
Read Full Review
0
Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov
Very nearly as entertaining as watching a potato bake.
Read Full Review

What Our Users Said

Vote Now!The average user rating for this movie is 4.0 (out of 10) based on 35 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Chuck M. gave it a2:
That's an hour and forty minutes of my life that was just wasted. How depressing.

Mark B. gave it a4:
This is a classic example of a "T.I.N.A.B.A.P.S." movie. You know, one where you watch the first few minutes, say to yourself, "This is not as bad as people say!" (hence the acronym)...and then watch the rest of it and learn why it IS as bad as people say! Well, the first ten minutes of Taxi fit the bill perfectly: there's a terrific action sequence during the opening credits, some funny Wacky Races-type sight gags as ambitious speed demon cabbie Queen Latifah tricks out her customized vehicle, and the very appealing presence of Latifah herself (more on THAT later)...and it's blanketed with wonderful wall-to-wall old school R&B on the soundtrack. So you say, "T.I.N.A.B.A.P.S."...and then Jimmy Fallon shows up. As a Gilligan-like cop who involves unwilling civilian Latifah in his pursuit of a criminal operation, he's absolutely unbearable: he twitches, mugs, slobbers, drools and hogs the camera enough to fill three Jerry Lewis pictures, and only Brittany Murphy's "I'm-so-cute-you-could-just-puke" performance in Little Black Book edges him out for worst acting in a 2004 movie! Taxi might, in fact, serve a practical and instructive purpose as a simultaneous how-to and how-not-to lesson in film acting and screen presence; watch all of Latifah's and Fallon's scenes together and you'll see how tremendously warm, natural, at ease with the camera, likable and charismatic she is, while he can't scrape together a single believable or nonannoying moment. (This holds true for both of them even during the scene in which they're high on nitrous oxide.) While it's definitely true that Latifah should shop for a better agent, she unfailingly makes pretty good movies (like the current Beauty Shop) into better ones while making terrible flicks (Sphere, Bringing Down the House) at least barely watchable while she's on screen. I'm not normally in favor of superimposing computer-generated images of long-departed stars like Humphrey Bogart and Marilyn Monroe onto TV commercials, but maybe there IS something to be said for improving all-time turkeys such as Myra Breckinridge and Plan 9 From Outer Space by artificially inserting Latifah into them. They'd STILL be terrible movies, mind you, but at least they'd have Queen Latifah!

Mikkel B gave it a3:
This movie is as far from the greatness of the original as "This movie is super good!!!" is from a real review.

matt w gave it a10:
This movie is awesome, a souped up cab with nitrous oxide, this movie is the best!!!

Kevin J. gave it a7:
It is the best movie.

Marc D. gave it a0:
This film proves one undeniable fact...foreign films should remain as they are.

Bit Burn gave it a2:
Some more Hollywood garbage.

Read more user comments...

Discuss this movie in our forums

Return to top of page
Home | FILM | DVD/VIDEO | MUSIC | GAMES | TV | Forums | About Metacritic metacritic.com

Popular on CBS sites: iPhone 3G | Fantasy Football | Moneywatch | Antivirus Software | Recipes | E3 2009

About CBS Interactive | Jobs | Advertise

© 2009 CBS Interactive Inc. All rights reserved. | Privacy Policy | Terms of Use