Spirit, The

USA Today Claudia Puig

The Spirit is uneven, but its campy adventure provides some amusing, escapist fun.

Baltimore Sun Chris Kaltenbach

Should make comic modern-day fanboys happy, what with its dark undertones, its beat-it-to-a-pulp action and its sly winks at comic greats past and present. Everyone else, including fans of Will Eisner's original Spirit, may find themselves wondering what all the fuss is about.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Sean Axmaker

The result is a great-looking movie with an awkward balance of pulp noir and campy self-awareness.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey

What a shame that The Spirit isn't nearly as good as it looks.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

There are good things to be said about The Spirit, but not enough of them to outweigh the bad.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

As the vamps, Eva Mendes and Scarlett Johansson might be posing for a fashion spread with just one note to play -- gorgeous high-bitch mockery.

Los Angeles Times Sam Adams

Miller's flat, humorless yarn is set in Central City, a vacant metropolis whose only residents seem to be cops and crooks.

The New York Times A.O. Scott

What is most striking about The Spirit is how little pleasure it affords, in spite of its efforts to by sly, sexy, heartfelt and clever all at once.

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

Miller seems to have brought neither his brains nor his heart (both of which we know he's got) to this project. The style is willing. But the spirit is weak.

New York Post Kyle Smith

With its starkly contrasted visuals (fierce blacks, Clorox whites, a dash of unholy crimson), The Spirit may resemble a comic book more than any live-action film yet made, but it makes "Max Payne" look like a gleaming jewel of storytelling by comparison.

Premiere Jordan Burchette

Not charming, but not cynical, The Spirit is wholly unrecommendable, but made with greater care than many movies that are.

Boston Globe Ty Burr

The movie's cleverest idea is to give the Octopus identical clone henchmen with names like Phobos, Logos, and Huevos, all played by Louis Lombardi with a marvelous fat-boy idiot grin.

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

Maybe if there was something going with the dialogue - snappy Chandlerisms, say, or even just sentences that made sense - the fussy digital artifice of The Spirit wouldn't seem so, well, dispiriting.

Village Voice Robert Wilonsky

The fanboys will find room in their heart to forgive the desecration. Everyone else won't care at all.

Variety Justin Chang

Plunges into a watery grave early on and spends roughly the next 100 minutes gasping for air.

Washington Post Carina Chocana

Doesn't just play like a cheap "Batman" knockoff, it plays like a cheap "Batman" knockoff that knows it's a cheap "Batman" knockoff -- and wants to be sure everybody knows it knows.

Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov

Ultimately, it's a long, incoherent mess of a film, enlivened only by the sure knowledge that the great Will Eisner's original is available to one and all at your nearest comic-book shop.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

The Spirit is mannered to the point of madness. There is not a trace of human emotion in it. To call the characters cardboard is to insult a useful packing material.

Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips

Only Sarah Paulson, as the Spirit's doctor and sometime lover, seems to be in there playing the scenes as if she were a human being in a comic book superhero scenario, as opposed to a comic book character stuck in a cruddy movie.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Nathan Rabin

The Spirit feels like the follow-up to "Batman & Robin" no one wanted.

New York Daily News Elizabeth Weitzman

Miller clearly wanted to make an impression, and that he does. Maybe it's better to be remembered for one of the worst movies of the year than forgotten for a mediocre one.

The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt

It is truly a mess.

Portland Oregonian M. E. Russell

The movie is a septic tank of vapid noir posturing, bad narration, bizarre pacing, cartoonishly hot femme fatales and ineptly staged slapstick.

San Francisco Chronicle Peter Hartlaub

Throwing your $10.25 down a storm drain is a better idea; at least that way you won't feel the added self-loathing of wasting more than an hour and a half of your life watching Eva Mendes in the worst acting job of her career.