La nouvelle guerre des boutons 2011

Rachel Saltz, New York Times: The slick filmmaking - the movie has a glossy, Hollywood-ready feel that sometimes tips into the cutesy - works against its themes. Read more

Tom Keogh, Seattle Times: Barratier can't seem to do anything with it other than keep raising the violence and anger. Read more

Alison Willmore, AV Club: Though this version transplants the tale to World War II, it doesn't try for any nuanced commentary on the conflict. Read more

Tom Russo, Boston Globe: The two threads aren't really woven together into the sort of tight, overarching theme that the film seems built to convey. Read more

Sheri Linden, Los Angeles Times: Though it's handled with little subtlety, the way the atmosphere of suspicion in Vichy France filters down to the kids is a smart slant on the material. Read more

Ella Taylor, NPR: At a time when most family movies come processed through extreme software and 3-D glasses, this film's gentle vision of the simple life has its old-fashioned charms - though they press too hard on the emo buttons for my taste. Read more

Kyle Smith, New York Post: Seeing the French Resistance through the eyes of little kids yields a cutesy, simplistic and sentimental would-be fable in "War of the Buttons." Read more

Amy Biancolli, San Francisco Chronicle: It does not attempt to provide a complete or even vaguely realistic depiction of the rural French resistance in the endgame to World War II. Read more

Joe Williams, St. Louis Post-Dispatch: Although it's updated to World War II and alludes to the Holocaust, this golden-hued remembrance is about as horrific as "Hogan's Heroes." Read more

Sam Adams, Time Out: That War of the Buttons shows no insight into how a nation's will could be so easily subdued is disappointing; that it shows no curiosity on the subject is inexcusable. Read more

Jon Frosch, Village Voice: Corny ... a revisionist fantasy of French heroism. Read more