 The producers of Derailed may have been asking for trouble when they stuck with the title of their movie -- and they're getting it. Almost every critic is pitching in to derail the film, which stars Jennifer Aniston and Clive Owen. Manohla Dargis in the New York Times dismisses it as "a glossy and often risible bit of trash." Similarly, Ty Burr in the Boston Globe writes, "Derailed is a tawdry, predictable hunk of movie headcheese," but then he adds, "I still had a pretty good time with it. As I walked out of the movie theater, though, I reminded myself that critics see these things for free and that if I'd paid $9 plus Goobers and Coke like everybody else, I'd doubtless feel rooked." Steven Rea in the Philadelphia Inquirer suggests that people just wait and add the movie to their Netflix list, while Liam Lacey in the Toronto Globe and Mail says people should find it "entertaining enough if you approach it with appropriately low expectations." Or as Amy Biancolli puts it in the Houston Chronicle: "If you can turn off your powers of critical judgment you might enjoy a few of its more corkscrew revelations, but only if you don't see them coming, and likely as not, you will." But none of those disclaimers seem to make much sense to Carina Chocano, who observes in the Los Angeles Times: "Derailed is a silly, lurid, pulpy thriller that's not nearly lurid and pulpy enough to be much fun, but more than silly enough to be ludicrous." |
