Conspiracy Theory

Dallas Observer Michel Sragow

Even when Conspiracy Theory is jammed or rushed or overly jittery, Gibson's command--of Jerry's fractured psyche, his freak perceptions, and his ardor--gives the picture blue-eyed soul.

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

Mel Gibson and Julia Roberts contribute major star power to the uneven tale, but it never becomes as convincing as a real conspiracy theory should.

San Francisco Examiner Barbara Shulgasser

The good guys metamorphose into bad guys and back into good guys with dazzling efficiency in Brian Helgeland's disturbing, comic script.

Washington Post Rita Kempley

With it's many knotty connections and complex exposition, the movie is definitely something of a muddle, but for that matter so are most conspiracy theories.

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

You're set up for when director Richard Donner -- who worked with Gibson on all three audience-pleasing Weapons -- switches the movie from a really interesting, jittery, literate, and witty tone poem about justified contemporary paranoia (and the creatively unhinged dark side of New York City) to an overloaded, meandering iteration of a Lethal Weapon project that bears the not-so-secret stamp of audience testing and tinkering.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

Unfortunately, the parts of the movie that are truly good are buried beneath the deadening layers of thriller cliches and an unconvincing love story.

Empire Kim Newman

Though it tries to be different, with hair's-breadth escapes that don't depend on implausible stunts or Bondian-scale explosions, Conspiracy Theory is an uneasy mix of laughs and thrills; suspense and soap.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

Not a terrible movie exactly, just a dark, edgy idea relentlessly worn down into mildly diverting blandness by the mega-wattage presence of stars Mel Gibson and Julia Roberts.

Variety Todd McCarthy

A below-par star vehicle for Mel Gibson and Julia Roberts, Conspiracy Theory is a sporadically amusing but listless thriller that wears its humorous, romantic and political components like mismatched articles of clothing.

The New York Times Elvis Mitchell

The only sneaky scheme at work here is the one that inflates a hollow plot to fill 2 1/4 hours while banishing skepticism with endless close-ups of big, beautiful movie-star eyes.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

In the end, Conspiracy Theory fails to work as an action film, a romance, or a mystery -- all of which it aspires to be.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

Instead of a scalding brew of mirth and malice, served black, Donner settles up a tepid latte, decaf.

Salon.com Charles Taylor

Conspiracy Theory doesn't know whether it wants to be a comedy, a political thriller, a romance or a satire.

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

It's just a simple thriller whose goal is little more than to keep moving.

LA Weekly Hazel-Dawn Dumpert

The film isn't really about much and so feels patchy and forced, with elements more calculated than inspired, more urgent than exciting.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen

With a plot that thickens like congealed stew, this movie about a harmless nutbar, an attorney and a cabal can leave you lost in banality.

Austin Chronicle Steve Davis

Taking its cue from the notion that American society is obsessed with covert political intrigues and machinations, Conspiracy Theory is an interesting but flawed thriller in which the wildly paranoiac is something really real.

Newsweek Corie Brown

Roberts and Gibson form a "pas de deux," two lonely urbanites fighting vague yet common enemies in a plot that never quite comes together.

Washington Post Stephen Hunter

It is one of those soap bubbles of a film, fleeting, ephemeral, seemingly there when it is not. As you leave the theater, it diminishes with each step, collapsing into shards of imagery and sensations of movement. It's the film that never was.

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

It might even have made a good film, but it hasn't. In the hands of stars in denial about their stardom and a director who can't be bothered to take things seriously, it has come out implausible and unsatisfying, a comic thriller that is not especially funny or thrilling.

Chicago Reader Lisa Alspector

The story--written by Brian Helgeland and directed by Richard Donner--was just dumb.