| 80 |
Washington Post
A caper film of such postmodernist pretense that it's almost a parody of itself.
|
| 80 |
Los Angeles Times
A gem of a romantic crime comedy that turns out to be clever, amusing and unpredictable.
|
| 63 |
Chicago Sun-Times
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.
|
| 63 |
Miami Herald
Harmless, mildly enjoyable.
|
| 60 |
Chicago Reader
Bill Stamets
Writer-director Chris Ver Wiel stocks this diverting crime comedy with familar characters and formulas.
|
| 50 |
TV Guide
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.
|
| 50 |
San Francisco Chronicle
It's a respectable B- movie -- airy, inconsequential and a little too cute at times, but fairly entertaining all the same.
|
| 50 |
Boston Globe
Ladling in so much schmaltz that even his in-house critic says, ''This thing's worse than `Terms of Endearment.'''
|
| 50 |
Charlotte Observer
The yarn itself is a winning one.
|
| 50 |
New York Post
It's almost worth the price of admission to see Allen paying homage to "Singin' in the Rain" in the final sequence. Almost.
|
| 40 |
Washington Post
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.
|
| 30 |
The New York Times
This mistaken-identity picture is so film-culture referential that the final product is a ghost.
|
| 30 |
The Onion (A.V. Club)
In the absence of sincerity, Cletis Tout creates a vacuum that flushes out the entire story, leaving nothing but its own hollow cleverness.
|
| 25 |
New York Daily News
It all makes the head spin -- in the direction of the exit sign.
|
| 25 |
Entertainment Weekly
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.
|
| 25 |
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Who is Cletis Tout? Who cares?
|
| 20 |
LA Weekly
John Dentino
What should have been a smart, stylish crime caper that nourishes film buffs with its multiple cinema references feels more like force-feeding.
|
| 20 |
New Times (L.A.)
What it lacks are solid performances, save Slater's game attempt to take everything seriously.
|
| 10 |
Variety
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.
|
| 10 |
Village Voice
This charmless nonsense ensues amid clanging film references that make "Jay and Silent Bob's Excellent Adventure" seem understated.
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