Welcome to Mooseport

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.