Detroit Rock City

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

While it's possible to have a great time with the movie without having any interest in Kiss, it should be noted that the band does make an appearance.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Paula Nechak

Truly raunchy but it's more sweetly stupid and silly than anything.

TV Guide Steve Simels

A very sweet, very funny coming-of-age story, featuring Kiss as the Great White Whale of adolescence.

Variety Dennis Harvey

It's crude, sexist, ear-splittingly loud and a helluva lotta fun for anyone suffering from past or present testosterone overload.

Chicago Reader Lisa Alspector

Unlike the many youth movies that can't overcome their makers' hindsight, this one may actually put you in an adolescent frame of mind.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

Detroit Rock City possesses three characteristics: an irreverent attitude, a high energy approach, and a loud soundtrack. While these qualities don't necessarily add up to a good movie, they keep the proceedings from becoming dull.

Village Voice Gary Dauphin

There's an awful lot of rocking out going on in Detroit Rock City, but then rocking out is this occasionally clever but lifeless movie's reason for being.

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

It's not a full-on go-for-broke love letter to rock 'n' roll or a broad, joyous spoof, but something stuck awkwardly in between.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen

The tuneful melodies of their favourite band grace the soundtrack, but let's not confuse this with a rock 'n' roll movie -- the music is just the blank canvas awaiting the higher art of the gross-out.

Film Threat Ron Wells

If you love KISS, you'll probably see this movie anyway. If you don't, there's no point.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

Well, it could have been good. But this goofy homage to Kiss fans gets dry mouth pretty fast.

Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten

A mildly diverting comedy but has little of real substance to recommend it.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

It's an utterly fake nostalgia piece -- stupid and pandering, a bad-boy teen flick that plays less like a loving look at the late '70s than a terrible movie from the late '70s.

Chicago Tribune Mark Caro

A rock 'n' roll film should be funny-crazy -- not just a big, dumb promo for some over-the-hill dudes in makeup who are trying to sell today's kids on yesterday's glory by championing deliquency.

The New York Times Elvis Mitchell

The cast never has much chance to shine. And the main attraction is kept all too understandably under wraps.

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

This aggressively stupid film is merely business as usual, a compendium of all the current obsessions and fixations that make so many of these films such unhappy experiences.

New Times (L.A.) Robert Wilonsky

A turgid, unfunny, out-of-time rockspolitation movie.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Nathan Rabin

Such a stupid, painfully obvious, gratingly unfunny dud that it's unlikely to please even the most gullible and easy-to-please members of the Kiss army.