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Who Is Cletis Tout?
Generally unfavorable reviews
Based on 20 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 10 votes
Read user comments
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Movie Info
Genre(s): Suspense/Thriller
Written by: Chris Ver Wiel
Directed by: Chris Ver Wiel
Release Date:
Theatrical: July 26, 2002
DVD: January 7, 2003
Running Time: 93 minutes, Color
Origin: Canada / UK
Summary
RATING: R for language, some violence and sexuality
Starring Christian Slater, Tim Allen, Portia de Rossi, Billy Connolly, Richard Dreyfuss, Joseph Scoren, and RuPaul
A prison escapee (Slater) assumes the identity of a deceased man named Cletis Tout. He soon discovers that someone had a contract out on Cletis' life, so now the escapee has to deal with not only the police, but a hitman (Allen) as well.
Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database Official Studio Site
What The Critics Said
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...
Washington Post Stephen Hunter
A caper film of such postmodernist pretense that it's almost a parody of itself.
Read Full Review >Los Angeles Times Kevin Thomas
A gem of a romantic crime comedy that turns out to be clever, amusing and unpredictable.
Read Full Review >Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
There was a lot I liked in Cletis Tout, including the performances and the very audacity of details like the magic tricks and the carrier pigeons. But it seemed a shame that the writer and director, Chris Ver Wiel, took a perfectly sound story idea and complicated it into an exercise in style. Less is more.
Read Full Review >Chicago Reader Bill Stamets
Writer-director Chris Ver Wiel stocks this diverting crime comedy with familar characters and formulas.
Read Full Review >TV Guide Maitland McDonagh
Screenwriter Chris ver Weil's directing debut is good-natured and never dull, but its virtues are small and easily overshadowed by its predictability. It's the kind of film that plays better on video than in theaters.
Read Full Review >San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle
It's a respectable B- movie -- airy, inconsequential and a little too cute at times, but fairly entertaining all the same.
Read Full Review >Boston Globe Janice Page
Ladling in so much schmaltz that even his in-house critic says, ''This thing's worse than `Terms of Endearment.'''
Read Full Review >New York Post Lou Lumenick
It's almost worth the price of admission to see Allen paying homage to "Singin' in the Rain" in the final sequence. Almost.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Michael O'Sullivan
Cletis Tout is both in love with and able to laugh at the conventions it adopts, which is exactly where it goes wrong. It's just a little too self-satisfied.
Read Full Review >The New York Times A.O. Scott
This mistaken-identity picture is so film-culture referential that the final product is a ghost.
Read Full Review >The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias
In the absence of sincerity, Cletis Tout creates a vacuum that flushes out the entire story, leaving nothing but its own hollow cleverness.
Read Full Review >New York Daily News Jami Bernard
It all makes the head spin -- in the direction of the exit sign.
Read Full Review >Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman
Allen is no more convincing than the writer-director, Chris Ver Wiel, who strings together faux-QT, faux-Elmore Leonard clichés like so many necklace beads and pretends that's the same thing as making a movie.
Read Full Review >LA Weekly John Dentino
What should have been a smart, stylish crime caper that nourishes film buffs with its multiple cinema references feels more like force-feeding.
Read Full Review >New Times (L.A.) Luke Y. Thompson
What it lacks are solid performances, save Slater's game attempt to take everything seriously.
Variety Scott Foundas
A convoluted comic caper that labors to affect a lighthearted, off-the-cuff feel, and winds up being a copy of a copy of a bad Tarantino-Elmore Leonard forgery, with Tim Allen as a glib cinephile hitman.
Read Full Review >Village Voice Laura Sinagra
This charmless nonsense ensues amid clanging film references that make "Jay and Silent Bob's Excellent Adventure" seem understated.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 7.5 (out of 10) based on 10 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Lee F. gave it a 9:
Watched this on video...it intrigued me. again the critics were wrong! it was entertaining...there were a couple of things you had to 'overlook' (too fast of a train, etc), but we chalked it up to Cletis/Finch's 'memory' or things (boy that was a REALLY fast train). Tim Allen's Singing in the Rain homage was great at the end!
Sooz H. gave it a 10:
Oh my gosh! Of *course* this movie is a parody of the fantastical crime plots! It was great! It's a little Pulp Fiction meets everyothercrimeplottedmovie! It's easy to see what will happen next, but that's the charm! Delightfully entertaining, and, yes, probably better at home with a glass of wine and a loved one than in the theaters with greasy popcorn and whiney children...but sure...take me away from life for a while and let me believe in movies again!
Lyndsey M. gave it an 8:
I really enjoyed this...a little offbeat, but that's part of what I like. Do the big-budget movie makers pay off these critics and reviewers?!
Digithrope gave it a 0:
So bad i could only sit through 20 minutes. it felt as though the whole thing had been cobbled together by a bureaucracy of retarded money-grubbing smellhounds. i walked out of my own living room and demanded that i give the money back to myself.
Ted A. gave it an 8:
This movie was a bit odd but very enjoyable. Dreyfuss was wasted unfortunaltely.
James Scoopy gave it an 8:
A cute little film. It is not without flaws, but it has so much charm that I overlooked and weak spots.
Al V. gave it a 9:
This movie had me glued to my chair! It's extremely entertaining, but make sure you pay attention. Lots of stuff is happening all at one time and you may get lost in the plots - that's what kept it from getting a perfect 10.
