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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
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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.
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60
Empire Chris Hewitt
It's loud, it's stupid, yet against all the odds, enjoyable.
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50
Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt
Frivolous but fun, somewhere between a comic "French Connection" and the craziest Nascar race you never saw.
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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.
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50
Boston Globe Wesley Morris
Too much of Taxi is just tired.
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50
Chicago Tribune Robert K. Elder
Riddled with comic potholes.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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30
Variety Robert Koehler
Commits any number of comedic violations during an aimless pursuit of laughs.
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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.
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30
The New York Times Dave Kehr
A bland, half-finished film that seems to have been conceived as off-peak cable fodder.
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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.
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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.
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30
Washington Post Michael O'Sullivan
Goes nowhere fast.
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30
The Onion (A.V. Club) Nathan Rabin
Feels stitched together from bits and pieces of lame '80s buddy-cop movies.
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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.
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25
Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez
If this is magic, I'll take "Gigli."
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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?
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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.
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25
New York Daily News Jack Mathews
Bad as he is, Fallon cannot claim Taxi's worst moment. That belongs to Ann-Margret.
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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.
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12
New York Post Megan Lehmann
This witless action comedy begins to insult the audience's intelligence from the opening scene.
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0
Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov
Very nearly as entertaining as watching a potato bake.
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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.

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