New This Week
Critics & Publications
Archives: A-Z Index
Advanced Search

Upcoming Release Calendar
Awards & Bests By Year
All-Time High Scores
All-Time Low Scores
How Metascores Are Calculated
Discuss Film In Our Forums

sort by name

sort by score

97 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days
xx Beer for My Horses
75 Boy A
xx Christmas on Mars: A Fantastical Film Freakout Featuring the Flaming Lips
48 Death Defying Acts
85 Edge of Heaven, The
33 Elite Squad
80 Encounters at the End of the World
20 Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed
86 Flight of the Red Balloon, The
54 Get Smart
73 Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson
34 Happening, The
25 Hell Ride
78 Hellboy II: The Golden Army
44 Henry Poole is Here
61 Incredible Hulk, The
65 Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
46 Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer
57 Journey to the Center of the Earth 3D
xx Kiss the Bride
63 Kit Kittredge: An American Girl
73 Kung Fu Panda
52 Milarepa
62 Mister Foe
53 Mister Lonely
74 Mongol
61 On the Rumba River
83 Paranoid Park
32 Perfect Holiday, The
49 Pirates Who Don't Do Anything: A VeggieTales Movie, The
63 Planet B-Boy
72 Priceless
63 Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2, The
70 Standard Operating Procedure
35 Star Wars: The Clone Wars
57 Stone Angel, The
47 Strangers, The
61 Stuck
55 Sukiyaki Western Django
63 This Christmas
71 To the Limit
72 Transsiberian
71 Tropic Thunder
79 Visitor, The
93 WALL-E
37 War, Inc.
xx Whaledreamers
54 What We Do Is Secret
66 When Did You Last See Your Father?
54 You Don't Mess with the Zohan
39 Young People F**king
45 Zombie Strippers

Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

Welcome to Mooseport
20th Century Fox Film Corporation


2.2

based on 36 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

based on 16 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie

FILM:

MPAA RATING: PG-13 for some brief sexual comments and nudity

Starring Gene Hackman, Ray Romano, Marcia Gay Harden, Maura Tierney, Christine Baranski, Fred Savage, Rip Torn, and June Squibb

You think you've got competition for your girlfriend? Then, welcome to Mooseport, where the local plumber (Romano) find himself in a race for his girlfriend's affections - and in a race foe the mayor's office - with none other than the charismatic former President of the United States (Hackman). (20th Century Fox)

GENRE(S):	Comedy
WRITTEN BY:	Tom Schulman Doug Richardson (story)
DIRECTED BY:	Donald Petrie
RELEASE DATE:	DVD: May 25, 2004 Video: May 25, 2004 Theatrical: February 20, 2004
RUNNING TIME:	110 minutes, Color
ORIGIN:	USA

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

Los Angeles Times Kevin Thomas

Gene Hackman, bristling with wit and energy, is at his amusing best in the robust comedy.

Chicago Tribune Mark Caro

Welcome to Mooseport isn't a belly-laugh farce. It's more along the lines of a "My Cousin Vinny," where you just enjoy almost everybody who crosses the screen. Such a comedy these days is more than welcome.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

Hackman could charm the chrome off a trailer hitch. Romano is more of the earnest, aw-shucks, sincere, well-meaning kind of guy whose charm is inner and only peeks out occasionally. They work well together here.

Premiere Peter Debruge

Offers a charming distraction from the current campaign season by sidestepping real issues and making light of the process.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

Romano just doesn't have the stuff to bring off a role that requires a Jimmy Stewart or Tom Hanks. He's supposed to be overshadowed by his nemesis, of course, but Hackman chews him up and spits him out so effectively that the movie is glaringly lopsided.

Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey

A toothless political satire set in a Maine coastal village. It plays like six subplots in search of a sitcom.

USA Today Mike Clark

David Mamet handled such small-town whimsy better in 2000's "State and Main." Hackman could play his role in his sleep, but Romano IS asleep. Result: Welcome to Mildport, and that's being kind.

Baltimore Sun Chris Kaltenbach

Determinedly genial and relentlessly bland.

TV Guide Ken Fox

Romano is no match for his heavy-hitting supporting cast: Next to the seasoned likes of Harden or Rip Torn, who's hilarious as Cole's campaign manager, Romano's presence barely registers. Aside from the charming Tierney, there are no surprises in Mooseport.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

Harden and Tierney waste performances of moderate complexity, Baranski adds her usual brand of silky sarcasm and Rip Torn provides a welcome presence as Cole's jolly campaign manager.

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

It neither mocks nor satirizes, it doesn't touch any social issues, and though it is about an election, there are no losers. For all those reasons, there aren't many laughs, either. Political comedy plays against tension, and there just isn't any.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey

Instead of a madcap farce, the movie grinds along into a series of laboured comic bits.

New York Post Megan Lehmann

Screenwriter Tom Schulman, who won an Oscar for "Dead Poets Society," gives us a narrative reminiscent of a pup chasing its tail, as characters struggle to catch up with inexplicably chopping and changing motives.

San Francisco Chronicle Ruthe Stein

But the jury is still out on Romano's future in movies. Hackman blows him off the screen.

The New York Times Dave Kehr

A terminally mild attempt to revive the populist political comedy pioneered by Frank Capra in the 1930's.

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

Tierney and Hackman contribute most to keeping this life-size and funny.

Film Threat Chris Barsanti

Not exactly screwball, and not exactly sentimental, but an uneasy and uncertain mix of the two.

LA Weekly Scott Foundas

This thoroughly unhip, unfunny political comedy is the kind of movie TV actors like Ray Romano make on hiatus from their successful series, and movie actors like Gene Hackman and Marcia Gay Harden make on hiatus from taking their careers seriously.

The Hollywood Reporter Sheri Linden

Compounding the sense of predictability and deja vu is the presence of well-known TV actors portraying the sorts of characters they've perfected on the small screen.

Variety Todd McCarthy

Lacks the antic energy and inspired imagination that might have put this over as a sharp-witted community comedy in the Preston Sturges vein.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

Welcome to Mooseport's satirical edge is dull and pitted, the screenplay is overlong and uninteresting, the comedy is soft and shapeless, and the actors perform like they're on a sit com.

Boston Globe Ty Burr

It's a disappointingly limp small-town farce played several shades too broadly by a cast that has done better work elsewhere.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

No one comes out of Mooseport unscathed -- not Rip Torn, as the president's campaign manager, not Christine Baranski as his avaricious ex-wife. It's a democracy of mediocrity, or worse.

Slate David Edelstein

I'm not sure if the movie's lack of momentum is the fault of the director, the screenwriter, or the star, Romano. But most likely, it represents the luckless convergence of three dismayingly low-watt talents.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Nathan Rabin

Hackman makes a plausible ex-president, but his graceful, lived-in performance is just about the only element of Welcome To Mooseport that rings true.

Village Voice J. Hoberman

Closer to Sturges than Capra, the movie means to satirize the TV-fueled carnivalesque nature of American electoral politics but only demonstrates the TV-fueled debasement of American commercial comedy.

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

If it were terrible, you could at least sink your teeth into it; but Welcome to Mooseport is like a biscuit soaked in water, ready to be gummed instead of chewed.

Washington Post Ann Hornaday

A movie marred by a flaccid script, listless pacing, a plethora of cutesy-poo gags and Ray Romano.

Washington Post Michael O'Sullivan

Set against "Mooseport's" backdrop of ramped-up whimsy -- and not the kind that charms, either, but the kind that gets old faster than uncovered cheese -- Romano just kind of disappears.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

A comedy so devoid of wit and point that not mentioning the other actors trapped in this rathole would be an act of charity.

Miami Herald Connie Ogle

But the blame for the stultifying Mooseport lies squarely on the shoulders of the screenwriters and anyone else who assumed the limited Romano could carry such a dated, lousy film. The results are in: He can't do it, at least not without a lot more help.

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

Romano tries hard, but it takes real big-screen talent to draw laughs and emotions from material as flimsy and formulaic as the script.

Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten

As is, Welcome to Mooseport is clunkily earthbound as its characters and the situations plod forward while never getting anywhere.

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

To a character, every man in this faux-homey burg has been castrated! They're all impotent buffoons!

Dallas Observer Robert Wilonsky

Welcome to Mooseport... is intended to be a comedy; that hypothesis is a generous leap of faith, given the fact that "House of Sand and Fog" contains more moments of mirth than this rather joyless exercise in waste and torpor.

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

It's a terrible movie, ugly to look at, tediously drawn out, unfunny in every cell and fiber of its being.

The average user rating for this movie is 2.2 (out of 10) based on 16 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Rob S gave it a0:
Let's be honest, there's not a funny bone in Ray Romano's body. Never has since I first saw the guy, but then again Kenny-G has a carreer too.

The Madman gave it a5:
A mildly enjoyable film. Romano's performance sincerely lacked the depth required to make this work either because of an incomplete script or his ability to ignore it. Hackman was brilliant and captivating as always, but Romano's inability to engage us was a glaring fault. Nevertheless, one can always watch Head of State to remind us how truly bad political satires are made.

James C. gave it a 1:
This movie stinks on ice. It wasn't even half as good as I expected it to be. Gene Hackman and Ray Romano aren't even funny!!!

Patrick S. gave it a 0:
It has a terrible plot, terrible actors (Gene Hackman is yesterdays news) and everything just feels terrible.

Ray R. gave it a 10:
This is one welcome you WON'T want to decline! High flying special effects (watch that boat scene!!), a surpise "twister" of an ending, and everyone's love, Ray Romano, make this a winner!

Michael C. gave it a 0:
For some reason, I just LOVE to HATE Ray Romano. His standup sucks, his sitcom sucks, and now he's completed the cycle with a movie that REALLY REALLY sucks.

Jared P. gave it a 0:
I think I can safely say this movie is the worst movie I have ever seen.

Welcome to Mooseport 20th Century Fox Film Corporation

Welcome to Mooseport
20th Century Fox Film Corporation