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

38 12 Rounds
xx Baby on Board
xx Bob Funk
62 Cherry Blossoms
38 Confessions of a Shopaholic
38 Crossing Over
38 Dark Streets
58 Defiance
45 Fanboys
31 Fired Up
37 Forever Strong
34 Friday the 13th
72 Gran Torino
47 He's Just Not That Into You
47 Inkheart
52 International, The
45 Jonas Brothers: The 3D Concert Experience
50 Madea Goes to Jail
51 Morning Light
51 My Bloody Valentine 3-D
29 New in Town
28 Nobel Son
40 Outlander
39 Paul Blart: Mall Cop
56 Phoebe in Wonderland
36 Pink Panther 2
xx Powder Blue
69 Revolutionary Road
20 Spinning Into Butter
17 Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li
64 Thousand Years of Good Prayers, A
63 Tokyo!
74 Two Lovers
56 Valkyrie
91 Waltz with Bashir
22 What Goes Up

Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

Who Is Cletis Tout?
Paramount Classics


7.5

based on 20 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

based on 10 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie

MPAA 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.

GENRE(S):	Suspense/Thriller
WRITTEN BY:	Chris Ver Wiel
DIRECTED BY:	Chris Ver Wiel
RELEASE DATE:	DVD: January 7, 2003 Video: January 7, 2003 Theatrical: July 26, 2002
RUNNING TIME:	93 minutes, Color
ORIGIN:	Canada / UK

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.

Los Angeles Times Kevin Thomas

A gem of a romantic crime comedy that turns out to be clever, amusing and unpredictable.

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.

Miami Herald Connie Ogle

Harmless, mildly enjoyable.

Chicago Reader Bill Stamets

Writer-director Chris Ver Wiel stocks this diverting crime comedy with familar characters and formulas.

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.

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.

Boston Globe Janice Page

Ladling in so much schmaltz that even his in-house critic says, ''This thing's worse than `Terms of Endearment.'''

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

The yarn itself is a winning one.

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.

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.

The New York Times A.O. Scott

This mistaken-identity picture is so film-culture referential that the final product is a ghost.

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.

New York Daily News Jami Bernard

It all makes the head spin -- in the direction of the exit sign.

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.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Sean Axmaker

Who is Cletis Tout? Who cares?

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.

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.

Village Voice Laura Sinagra

This charmless nonsense ensues amid clanging film references that make "Jay and Silent Bob's Excellent Adventure" seem understated.

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.

Who Is Cletis Tout? Paramount Classics

Who Is Cletis Tout?
Paramount Classics