Who is Cletis Tout?: Critic Reviews

Awful.

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

Merely a diversion, but clever enough to divert.

It's just a little too self-satisfied.

The result, however well-intentioned, is ironically just the sort of disposable, kitchen-sink homage that illustrates why the whole is so often less than the sum of its parts in today's Hollywood.

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

A woefully self-conscious, self-referential post-modern tale in a long line of Quentin Tarantino knockoffs that makes a strong case against letting film buffs write and direct movies.

There was a lot I liked in Cletis Tout ... 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.

Cletis is playful but highly studied and dependent for its success on a patient viewer.

The skills of a calculus major at M.I.T. are required to balance all the formulaic equations in the long-winded heist comedy Who Is Cletis Tout?

A convoluted comic caper that labors to affect a lighthearted, off-the-cuff feel.

[The] script is in dire need of a few more rewrites.

Quirky, often-fun film.

Tries so hard to be quirky and funny that the strain is all too evident.

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

On the level of the dime-a-dozen Tarantino wannabes that clutter the bottom shelves at the video store.

There's a sweetness to it that's disarming and diverting -- mostly thanks to performances of Slater, Richard Dreyfuss as his partner in crime, and Portia Di Rossi as Dreyfuss' daughter.

If you love movies, it's hard not to like Who Is Cletis Tout? or at least smile through it.

The whole mildly pleasant outing -- the R rating is for brief nudity and a grisly corpse -- remains aloft not on its own self-referential hot air, but on the inspired performance of Tim Allen.

Overall, Cletis Tout is a winning comedy that excites the imagination and tickles the funny bone.

A great idea becomes a not-great movie.

The movie attempts to mine laughs from a genre -- the gangster/crime comedy -- that wore out its welcome with audiences several years ago, and its cutesy reliance on movie-specific cliches isn't exactly endearing.

Why sit through a crummy, wannabe-hip crime comedy that refers incessantly to old movies, when you could just rent those movies instead, let alone seek out a respectable new one?

Warmed-over Tarantino by way of wannabe Elmore Leonard.

Whereas the extremely competent hitman films such as Pulp Fiction and Get Shorty resonate a sardonic verve to their caustic purpose for existing, Who Is Cletis Tout? is an inexpressible and drab wannabe looking for that exact niche.