Atlas Shrugged: Part I 2011

Carina Chocano, New York Times: Atlas Shrugged: Part I is in many ways charmingly oblivious to its inherent contradictions and the fact that its capitalist titans appear to be squatting in old, abandoned Dynasty sets, eating food-court baked potatoes. Read more

Ben Kenigsberg, Time Out: [A] DIY megaproduction... whose ambition vastly exceeds its technical command. Read more

Joe Morgenstern, Wall Street Journal: Don't hold your breath for parts 2 and 3. Read more

Scott Tobias, AV Club: The film is curiously sterile and lifeless, hardly the stuff of revolution. It feels more like an ideologically reversed Tucker: The Man And His Dream, written and performed by robots. Read more

Bill Goodykoontz, Arizona Republic: The acting is so poor and the story so badly told that the viewer's feelings about Rand's novel -- an epic ode to free-market fundamentalism -- are almost immaterial (though if you're a devoted fan, you'll perhaps be more forgiving). Read more

Loren King, Boston Globe: About to lose his long-held rights to Ayn Rand's novel, and perhaps to cash in on apparent Tea Party interest and support, producer John Aglialoro ... rushed this film into a low-budget production and it shows in every frame. Read more

Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune: This movie is crushingly ordinary in every way, which with Rand I wouldn't have thought possible. Read more

Todd McCarthy, Hollywood Reporter: Flubbed, under-produced representation of the first third of Ayn Rand's still controversial novel bodes ill for parts two and three. Read more

Brian Miller, L.A. Weekly: Apart from its deficiencies as fiction, whatever its philosophical limitations (the rich and able should only help themselves in Rand's "Objectivism"), the book proves proudly indigestible on film. Read more

Richard Brody, New Yorker: This comically tasteless and flavorless adaptation of Ayn Rand's bombastic magnum opus delivers her simplistic nostrums with smug self-satisfaction. Read more

Kyle Smith, New York Post: Though a bit stiff in the joints and acted by an undistinguished cast amid TV-movie trappings, this low-budget adaptation of Ayn Rand's novel nevertheless contains a fire and a fury that makes it more compelling than the average mass-produced studio item. Read more

Carrie Rickey, Philadelphia Inquirer: Atlas Shrugged. I arched eyebrow, scrunched forehead, yawned. Read more

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times: Let's say you know the novel, you agree with Ayn Rand, you're an objectivist or a libertarian, and you've been waiting eagerly for this movie. Man, are you going to get a letdown. Read more

Peter Travers, Rolling Stone: Ayn Rand's monumental 1,168-page, 1957 novel gets the low-budget, no-talent treatment and sits there flapping on screen like a bludgeoned seal. Read more

Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle: A low-budget film with more than a whiff of amateurism in its writing and direction. Read more

Liam Lacey, Globe and Mail: Made on the cheap with no-name stars, this is no better than a stilted anachronistic curiosity, a low-rent version of the eighties' prime-time soap Dallas, with the industrial concerns and sexual mores of 1950s, all, somehow, set in 2016. Read more

Linda Barnard, Toronto Star: A talky bore that spends too much time in wood-panelled offices and at chatter-heavy parties that were clearly shot on the cheap. Read more

Peter Debruge, Variety: Part one of a trilogy that may never see completion, this hasty, low-budget adaptation would have Ayn Rand spinning in her grave. Read more

Mark Jenkins, Washington Post: The first in a proposed trilogy, "Atlas Shrugged: Part 1" is nearly as stilted, didactic and simplistic as Rand's free-market fable. Read more