Advanced Search Beta »
Basic Search Fields
Who Is Cletis Tout?
Metascore
36 out of 100

Generally unfavorable - based on 20 Critics

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 4 out of 20
  2. Mixed: 7 out of 20
  3. Negative: 9 out of 20
view
per page
  1. Los Angeles Times
    Reviewed by: Kevin Thomas
    80
    A gem of a romantic crime comedy that turns out to be clever, amusing and unpredictable.
  2. Washington Post
    Reviewed by: Stephen Hunter
    80
    A caper film of such postmodernist pretense that it's almost a parody of itself.
  3. Chicago Sun-Times
    Reviewed by: Roger Ebert
    63
    There was a lot I liked in Cletis Tout, including the performances and the very audacity of details like the magic tricks and the carrier pigeons. But it seemed a shame that the writer and director, Chris Ver Wiel, took a perfectly sound story idea and complicated it into an exercise in style. Less is more.
  4. Miami Herald
    Reviewed by: Connie Ogle
    63
    Harmless, mildly enjoyable.
  5. Chicago Reader
    Reviewed by: Bill Stamets
    60
    Writer-director Chris Ver Wiel stocks this diverting crime comedy with familar characters and formulas.
  6. New York Post
    Reviewed by: Lou Lumenick
    50
    It's almost worth the price of admission to see Allen paying homage to "Singin' in the Rain" in the final sequence. Almost.
  7. San Francisco Chronicle
    Reviewed by: Mick LaSalle
    50
    It's a respectable B- movie -- airy, inconsequential and a little too cute at times, but fairly entertaining all the same.
  8. Boston Globe
    Reviewed by: Janice Page
    50
    Ladling in so much schmaltz that even his in-house critic says, ''This thing's worse than `Terms of Endearment.'''
  9. Charlotte Observer
    Reviewed by: Lawrence Toppman
    50
    The yarn itself is a winning one.
  10. TV Guide
    Reviewed by: Maitland McDonagh
    50
    Screenwriter Chris ver Weil's directing debut is good-natured and never dull, but its virtues are small and easily overshadowed by its predictability. It's the kind of film that plays better on video than in theaters.
  11. Washington Post
    Reviewed by: Michael O'Sullivan
    40
    Cletis Tout is both in love with and able to laugh at the conventions it adopts, which is exactly where it goes wrong. It's just a little too self-satisfied.
  12. The A.V. Club
    Reviewed by: Scott Tobias
    30
    In the absence of sincerity, Cletis Tout creates a vacuum that flushes out the entire story, leaving nothing but its own hollow cleverness.
  13. The New York Times
    Reviewed by: A.O. Scott
    30
    This mistaken-identity picture is so film-culture referential that the final product is a ghost.
  14. New York Daily News
    Reviewed by: Jami Bernard
    25
    It all makes the head spin -- in the direction of the exit sign.
  15. Entertainment Weekly
    Reviewed by: Owen Gleiberman
    25
    Allen is no more convincing than the writer-director, Chris Ver Wiel, who strings together faux-QT, faux-Elmore Leonard clichés like so many necklace beads and pretends that's the same thing as making a movie.
  16. Seattle Post-Intelligencer
    Reviewed by: Sean Axmaker
    25
    Who is Cletis Tout? Who cares?
  17. L.A. Weekly
    Reviewed by: John Dentino
    20
    What should have been a smart, stylish crime caper that nourishes film buffs with its multiple cinema references feels more like force-feeding.
  18. New Times (L.A.)
    Reviewed by: Luke Y. Thompson
    20
    What it lacks are solid performances, save Slater's game attempt to take everything seriously.
    All this critic's reviews
  19. Village Voice
    Reviewed by: Laura Sinagra
    10
    This charmless nonsense ensues amid clanging film references that make "Jay and Silent Bob's Excellent Adventure" seem understated.
  20. Variety
    Reviewed by: Scott Foundas
    10
    A convoluted comic caper that labors to affect a lighthearted, off-the-cuff feel, and winds up being a copy of a copy of a bad Tarantino-Elmore Leonard forgery, with Tim Allen as a glib cinephile hitman.
prev next
Page:
  • 1