| 100 |
Film Threat
Marcus D. Russell
See this film and laugh your ass off, and in between your tears of joy learn the true cause of racial and ethnic division.
|
| 90 |
Newsweek
Devin Gordon
Hilarious, affectionate spoof.
|
| 88 |
Miami Herald
The movie isn't just hilarious: It's witty and inventive, too, and in hindsight, it isn't even all that dumb.
|
| 83 |
Portland Oregonian
It's a goofball of a movie and a throwaway, but it's also completely free of self-import and the slightest hint of sentiment -- a perfect light entertainment that's guaranteed to launch itself as a franchise.
|
| 80 |
Salon.com
A joyful mix of high and low humor, pulled off with style and an eye for glamour (Danielle Hollowell deserves special praise for her costumes; she's the high priestess of fitted snakeskin).
|
| 80 |
Los Angeles Times
A funkadelic fun ride that shrewdly reinvigorates the eye-popping styles and pulpy veneer of '70s blaxploitation flicks.
|
| 80 |
New Times (L.A.)
Not only is Undercover Brother the funniest spy-thriller since "The Nude Bomb" (oh, behave), it feels like the proper sequel to "The Blues Brothers," crossing all kinds of lines between cartoonish buffoonery and genuine compassion for its characters.
|
| 80 |
LA Weekly
The film works no matter which side of the racial divide you're on, because nothing unites an audience quite like making fun of everyone.
|
| 80 |
The Onion (A.V. Club)
The rare popcorn movie that delivers. High-spirited and kinetic, it's the most endearingly goofy low comedy since "How High."
|
| 80 |
Variety
A frequently inspired hit-and-miss burlesque that definitely hits more than it misses.
|
| 80 |
Chicago Reader
Cheryl Ross
This send-up of 70s blaxploitation flicks mixes parody and social commentary to make larger points about the current state of American culture and race relations. The audience I saw the film with was almost choking with laughter.
|
| 80 |
Washington Post
May well wind up being the smartest bonehead comedy of the summer.
|
| 75 |
Charlotte Observer
Malcolm Lee's brilliant documentary about American race relations.
|
| 75 |
USA Today
The soundtrack (which includes James Brown, Michael Jackson and The Commodores) is better than a K-Tel "Best of the '70s" compilation, and the broad physical comedy is as reliable as a brick house.
|
| 75 |
Philadelphia Inquirer
This is a smart, spirited spoof that will leave you with a smile on your face - and an appetite for some serious '70s funk to play on the eight-track in your solid gold Cadillac convertible.
|
| 75 |
Baltimore Sun
It has a premise that never stops percolating.
|
| 75 |
ReelViews
Seems breezier and less self-conscious than the Mike Myers franchise.
|
| 75 |
New York Daily News
Satires like this tend to throw a lot of stuff at the wall, and in Undercover Brother, a surprising amount sticks.
|
| 75 |
San Francisco Chronicle
The picture is crammed with shameless satire, engaging moments of pure silliness and jokes that border on the outrageous. It combines relentless energy with an aura of good nature for a formula that works.
|
| 75 |
Chicago Tribune
Has such a cheerfully zingy energy that you keep rooting for it even when its jokes turn flatter than a jump shot at a YMCA pickup game.
|
| 67 |
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Griffin & Co. manage to be spectacularly outrageous, several of the gag sequences are hilariously imaginative and there's something almost deliciously liberating in the film's determination to make good-natured fun of what previously has been a very sacred movie cow.
|
| 67 |
Austin Chronicle
It's far from perfect -- as many jokes fall flat as succeed -- but like Undercover Brother himself, it's smarter than most, and twice as solid.
|
| 63 |
New York Post
Boisterously amusing.
|
| 63 |
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
Jason Anderson
Undercover Brother is very much a hero of our time. After all, the character began not in the 1970s, but three years ago as a cartoon on a Web site.
|
| 60 |
The New York Times
The one-liners are clever enough and the physical comedy and pop-culture goofing sufficiently dumb and broad to make Undercover Brother, a reasonably pleasant experience.
|
| 58 |
Entertainment Weekly
Lee's images of black and white stereotypes are agreeably silly yet altogether too thin and vanilla safe.
|
| 50 |
Village Voice
Much of Undercover Brother plays as a funnier, if similarly addled, "Bamboozled."
|
| 40 |
TV Guide
Saturday Night Live veteran Chris Kattan more or less steals the film as the racially confused Mr. Feather, a white supremacist bad guy whose speech patterns tend to get down and funky against his will.
|
| 40 |
Washington Post
Some of it is funny in a Zucker brothers slapstick way. And as the Man's geeky lieutenant, Chris Kattan has some amusingly kooky business. But there's not enough to sustain the comedy. Ultimately, the movie's short running time becomes its finest quality.
|
| 25 |
Boston Globe
Renee Graham
Tries to wring laughs from just about every dusty stereotype about blacks and whites imaginable. But it's all cheap, lazy, and unoriginal.
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