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Next Day Air
Metascore
46 out of 100

Mixed or average reviews - based on 20 Critics

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 4 out of 20
  2. Mixed: 11 out of 20
  3. Negative: 5 out of 20
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  1. The New York Times
    Reviewed by: Nathan Lee
    90
    With a script that snaps, characters that pop, a blaze of streetwise attitude and enough firepower to pulverize a significant chunk of South Philadelphia, Next Day Air nears neo-blaxploitation perfection. Good things come in strange packages.
  2. Chicago Sun-Times
    Reviewed by: Roger Ebert
    75
    A bloody screwball comedy, a film of high spirits. It tells a complicated story with acute timing and clarity, and gives us drug-dealing lowlifes who are almost poetic in their clockwork dialogue.
  3. The A.V. Club
    Reviewed by: Nathan Rabin
    75
    A very pleasant surprise, Next Day Air is the rare crime comedy that does justice to both sides of the equation.
  4. Chicago Reader
    Reviewed by: Cliff Doerksen
    70
    Director Benny Boom and screenwriter Blair Cobbs pull off the tough trick of investing profoundly stupid characters with humanity, while cinematographer David Armstrong plays gleefully with the grime-o-vision palette of '70s blaxploitation flicks.
  5. New York Daily News
    Reviewed by: Elizabeth Weitzman
    60
    He may be a first-time feature ­director, but music video master Benny Boom clearly knows how to pull a midlevel movie ­together.
  6. Chicago Tribune
    Reviewed by: Michael Phillips
    50
    Next Day Air is sort of bracing, though it isn't very good: Its total lack of dramatic and comic bearings, to say nothing of a point, keeps you wondering about the next fatality, in a half-interested way.
  7. Miami Herald
    Reviewed by: Rene Rodriguez
    50
    What ensues is an uneasy mix of farcical slapstick and comedy of errors with a violent, blood-soaked tale of inner-city crime.
  8. New York Post
    Reviewed by: Kyle Smith
    50
    Routine stuff, but things move quickly, with several offhand funny moments. Mos Def is hilarious in a cameo as another delivery guy.
  9. TV Guide
    Reviewed by: Perry Seibert
    50
    The right combination of goofy character behavior, action set pieces, and narrative drive to keep the movie from ever being boring.
  10. USA Today
    Reviewed by: Claudia Puig
    50
    Next Day Air can't decide whether it's a broad stoner comedy or a gritty Tarantino-esque action flick. The humor is there, but violence brings the laughter to an abrupt halt.
  11. Premiere
    Reviewed by: Rob Calvert
    50
    Predictable, and stereotypical.
  12. L.A. Weekly
    Reviewed by: Michelle Orange
    50
    Benny Boom built his reputation directing music videos and commercials, and his first feature, Next Day Air, falls somewhere between the blunt-force visuals of the former and the focus-grouped formulas of the latter.
  13. The Hollywood Reporter
    Reviewed by: Stephen Farber
    40
    There's a serious miscalculation when the lighthearted hijinks suddenly give way to a climactic scene of brutal violence.
  14. Variety
    Reviewed by: Justin Chang
    40
    An altogether bumbling excuse for an action-comedy.
  15. Washington Post
    Reviewed by: Dan Kois
    40
    I wished Next Day Air were funnier. In the end, it's a fitfully amusing, sloppy comedy that doesn't work very hard for your 10 bucks.
  16. Boston Globe
    Reviewed by: Janice Page
    38
    None of these characters provides more than a smattering of laughs, but Def is the one guy we might like to see more of, if only because his role is small and better executed than it deserves.
  17. Los Angeles Times
    Reviewed by: Sam Adams
    30
    That's about all Next Day Air can muster by way of invention, trying to slap a new face on a gaggle of rote gestures in a vain attempt to cover its own uselessness. But no matter how big the guns it draws, every shot is a dud.
  18. San Francisco Chronicle
    Reviewed by: Peter Hartlaub
    25
    This movie could really use an Avon Barksdale, but even actor Wood Harris, who played drug kingpin Barksdale in "The Wire," seems a bit lost.
  19. Entertainment Weekly
    Reviewed by: Adam Markovitz
    25
    If the movie doesn't even care about its characters, then how can we?
  20. Austin Chronicle
    Reviewed by: Marc Savlov
    11
    Might make a terrific double bill with the equally inane (but considerably more entertaining) "Con Air," with the French electonica duo Air chirruping in the background. But, you know, only if you're stoned out of your head.
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User Reviews

All reviews »
User Score
6.3 out of 10

Generally favorable reviews- based on 8 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 2 out of 4
  2. Mixed: 1 out of 4
  3. Negative: 1 out of 4
  1. LondonTruelove
    4
    I don't get if this was a comedy or what but I didn't laugh once if it was. Wasn't all that bad a movie but it wasn't really great either. You could not watch it and u wouldn't be missing much.… Full Review »
  2. kenf
    9
    What Hollywood needs a good comedy and action flick to give it life.
  3. ChadS
    6
    [***SELF-POLICING SPOILER ALERT***] Pothead bank robbers who forgo the money in the safe and steal security tapes instead, by way of their absolute incompetence, announce themselves as lightweight criminals, potentially, fun-lovin' ones. The opening caper in "Next Day Air" sets the audience up for a stoner action comedy: the black "Pineapple Express". But during one of the film's many flashbacks, Brody(Mike Epps) acts more like a crackhead bank robber when he severs another man's tongue. Too gangsta, perhaps? Yes. Too gangsta, by half. Played for laughs, Brody heard it wrong again(at the bank, needless to say, he was supposed to grab the green stuff), and sheepishly holds the tongue tip in his hand. His inclination for brutal violence is unexpected, a total buzzkill; it changes the tone of "Next Day Air", therefore killing the comedy in the process. Wrong move. Here's another. Although Jesus(Cisco Reyes) shows no outward signs of being stoned, the drug seller takes an uncommonly long time to figure out that Leo(Donald Faison) delivered the parcel to the wrong apartment(the courier had an empty handtruck). The pedestrian plotting doesn't stop there. "Next Day Air) acts as if it's running on a shoestring budget since Brody and his colleagues conduct their drug deal in such close proximity to the cocaine bricks' rightful owners. During pre-production, the filmmaker should have made budgetary allowances for one more locale. The final shootout is more than inevitable; it's contrived. But the film has energy, if not logic.… Full Review »
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