Cowboys & Aliens: Critic Reviews

Will somebody please stand up and give me some different aliens.

Cowboys & Aliens has fun moments, but it's a plodding entertainment because it mostly tastes like leftovers.

[Favreau] wavers uncertainly between goofy pastiche and seriousness in a movie that wastes its title and misses the opportunity to play with, you know, ideas about the western and science-fiction horror.

Yes, yes, cowboys punching aliens in the face can be funny. But it doesn't make this silly endeavour worthwhile.

Dialogue is terse and predictable, and the sci-fi thriller portion is even less compelling than the Western saga.

It may be two treats in one, but for an audience that's pigged out on spectacle all summer, that might be two treats too many.

It really is "Aliens'' on the open plains, "Independence Day'' for the nation's centennial, and what the movie lacks in originality and stick-to-your-ribs Western authenticity, it makes up for in pell-mell multiplex entertainment.

As in his handling of the first Iron Man, [Favreau] displays here the rare ability to patiently lay down the track along which his narrative will move, and he gets some good work from his performers.

Nothing very exciting happens.

The storytelling, punctuated by incoherent flashbacks, is often inscrutable: I'm still trying to figure out which side of the cosmos gave birth to the woman played by Olivia Wilde.

[A] loud new action genre mash-up.

What makes the movie work, really, is that above and beyond the conventions themselves doing their jobs, the actors seem truly invested...

Cowboys & Aliens is an agreeable time-killer, but I'll bet a couple of clever kids could make a livelier movie with a Woody puppet and a Predator doll.

Takes itself much too seriously, with acts of brutality outnumbering the gags.

The Searchers meet Independence Day. Great fun.

As preposterous moneymakers go, it's ambitious and well-made.

Alien-invasion aficionados should be pleased. Western nostalgists may be pleasantly surprised. Fans of cowboys-versus-aliens movies, well, it's been a long wait and here's your movie.

The filmmakers here (who include director Jon Favreau (Iron Man), five credited writers, and countless special-effects technicians) don't seem to have agreed on whether they're paying homage to these genres or mocking them.

Tonally, the movie is off: not quite as sober and majestic as the John Ford westerns it's inspired by, nor as ironic and irreverent as, well, Favreau's two Iron Man films.

Action-packed yet curiously lifeless, "Cowboys & Aliens" shoots blanks.

It's just big silly fun, the kind you're supposed to have at a summer movie with a ridiculous title.

"Cowboys & Aliens" is exactly what it sounds like: a cowboy movie and an alien movie thrown together, a genre mash-up that's more fun than good, but pretty good nonetheless.

Cowboys & Aliens is one of the silliest movies ever made, but so many otherwise serious people have attached their names to it that, as Arthur Miller wrote in Death of a Salesman, attention must be paid.

A ripping good ride.

This sharp-looking, committee-written adaptation of a genre-splicing graphic novel wins points by frequently, smartly and affectionately tipping its hat to classic Westerns and their archetypes.