 "KER-POW!!! Take that, Daredevil!" The critics appear to be taking their turns at clobbering the latest superhero of the screen. But, as any superhero worshiper knows, those dastardly blows are never telling; Daredevil is expected to make a mint at the box office this weekend. Still, the critics are getting in their licks while they can. Elvis Mitchell in the New York Times writes that star Ben Affleck "is shriveled by the one-dimensional role" as the movie "turns the legendary Man Without Fear into something second-rate and ordinary." The adjectives Wesley Morris uses in the Boston Globe are "hollow and pedestrian." John Anderson in Newsday calls it "ludicrous and lazy." And Mike Clark in USA Today calls it "the dullest live-action comic strip on record." Stephen Hunter in the Washington Post complains that "Daredevil doesn't take a single dare; it travels the road much trod." Chris Vognar in the Dallas Morning News grumbles: "It's a movie that exists for the sole purpose of selling itself -- and its soundtrack and its assorted merchandise tie-ins. Do yourself a favor and don't buy." Lou Lumenic in the New York Post concludes his review by remarking: "The flick misses the bullseye by such a length that nobody except hard-core fanboys and leather fetishists will be panting for the sequel promised at the end." The movie's best review comes from Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times. "The movie is, in short, your money's worth," he writes, "better than we expect, more fun than we deserve." And Joe Morgenstern in the Wall Street Journal even takes a middle ground, commenting: "It isn't a great film, or even a greatly original one. Still, it has many grace notes, and interesting oddities." So does Bob Strauss in the Los Angeles Daily News who concludes that the movie "is genuinely cool and thoroughly sucks in such near equal measure that just about any viewer could love it or hate it." |
