| 63 |
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
If physical appearance creates its own class system (in high school and beyond), then Qualls is perfect for this proselytizing role. He has that rarest of movie-star faces -- one that over comes the tyranny of beauty.
|
| 63 |
Baltimore Sun
The New Guy doesn't have a new idea in its head, but it trods over the old ground with such wit and heart that its lack of originality can be overlooked, if not entirely forgiven.
|
| 58 |
Entertainment Weekly
A Jekyll-and-Hyde teen comedy that sounds like a Pauly Shore reject, but Qualls moves his marionette body around with a true clown's effervescence, and he does rubber-faced parodies of youth cool that are just what youth cool deserves.
|
| 50 |
Chicago Sun-Times
It makes little sense, fails as often as it succeeds, and yet is not hateful and is sometimes quite cheerfully original.
|
| 50 |
New York Post
Uneven but occasionally hilarious teen comedy.
|
| 40 |
The New York Times
A bad-taste comedy with a heart.
|
| 40 |
The Onion (A.V. Club)
A comedy just funny enough to make viewers wish it were far funnier.
|
| 40 |
Chicago Reader
It isn't very good, but it doesn’t seem to care, which turns out to be rather refreshing.
|
| 38 |
New York Daily News
Tries everything possible to win you over -- satire, gross-out comedy, even earnest romance. But as any high-schooler can tell you, the harder you try, the bigger you fall.
|
| 25 |
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
The slapdash comic flailing of screenwriter and TV scribe-turned-director Ed Decter is only compounded by a script so disconnected you have to wonder if pages were lost on the way to the set.
|
| 25 |
Chicago Tribune
You have to have faith that kids will recognize a bad movie when it's foisted on them -- and they don't get much worse than The New Guy.
|
| 25 |
San Francisco Chronicle
Carla Meyer
Lame, haphazard teen comedy.
|
| 25 |
Miami Herald
Anyone who wants to enjoy himself at a good movie about a high school geek who undergoes a transformation should go see "'Spider-Man" again instead.
|
| 25 |
Boston Globe
Renee Graham
Probably would have worked better as a slamming soundtrack than as a muddle-headed movie.
|
| 20 |
TV Guide
Lame, derivative comedy.
|
| 20 |
Austin Chronicle
In an inspired bit of casting, Lyle Lovett plays the dad of the goofy-looking Diz/Gil. That these two could be related might be the only believable touch in this whole misfired thing.
|
| 20 |
LA Weekly
Various actors deserving of better (including Zooey Deschanel, Eddie Griffin and Lyle Lovett) suffer through the undercooked material, while love interest Eliza Dushku gamely gets through both a bikini-modeling montage and a mechanical bull ride, but none of their efforts can save this film.
|
| 12 |
Philadelphia Inquirer
Reaches breathtaking lows of incoherence, sexism, racial stereotyping, and -- did I say incoherence?
|
| 10 |
Los Angeles Times
An unintentional parody of every teen movie made in the last five years. Which can be the only rational explanation for making such a mess all over the screen.
|
| 10 |
Variety
Overall aroma of movie junk food.
|
| 10 |
Washington Post
Feckless and crude without any particularly funny redeeming value. If there's anything more to this poor excuse of a movie than immediately meets the eye, I'll get back to you.
|
| 0 |
New Times (L.A.)
An ugly-duckling tale so hideously and clumsily told it feels accidental. Surely, no one PLANNED something this disastrously unfunny.
|
| 0 |
Washington Post
Ann Hornaday
A particularly loathsome piece of cultural detritus, a trashy, crass piece of work that panders to the anxieties and desires of adolescents without a scintilla of sympathy or coherence.
|
