Son Of The Mask 2005

Terry Lawson, Detroit Free Press: The attempt to invoke the imaginative mayhem of Warner Bros. animation never gets anywhere beyond the obvious effort, and it rests uneasily with the messages about the importance of being a good parent and balancing work and play. Read more

Peter Debruge, Miami Herald: Unnecessary but not entirely unpleasant. Read more

Allison Benedikt, Chicago Tribune: Congratulations, it's a talking, dancing, top-hat-wearing boy! Just like in those incredibly innovative Quiznos commercials and that sitcom that got cancelled a while back. Read more

Andrea Gronvall, Chicago Reader: Whatever possessed director Lawrence Guterman and writer Lance Khazei to transform the sequel to 1994's libidinous hit comedy into pabulum? Read more

Tom Keogh, Seattle Times: Forget about such fripperies as story and character, and your inner 7-year-old can have a pretty good time with the film's Tex Avery-style mayhem ... and Chuck Jones-inspired sight gags. Read more

Richard Roeper, Ebert & Roeper: In the five years I've been co-hosting this show, this is the closest I've ever come to walking out halfway through the film, and now that I look back on the experience, I wish I had. Read more

Scott Tobias, AV Club: No doubt extensive market research shows that there's an audience out there for movies like Son Of The Mask, but it's too depressing to speculate who that might be. Read more

Randy Cordova, Arizona Republic: It's repetitious, overpowering and ultimately rather tiring, wearing out its welcome too soon. Plus, that darn baby just scares me. Read more

Wesley Morris, Boston Globe: 90 minutes of flying grand pianos, green vomit, giant hand grenades, and photography that almost takes you into the actors' pores. Read more

Kevin Crust, Los Angeles Times: It's astonishing how dull a movie that packs so much visual overstimulation into its frames can be. Read more

Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly: Sags more than it spins. Read more

Jennie Punter, Globe and Mail: If you are the son of Frankenstein, Flubber, Dracula, Lassie, Ali Baba, Sinbad, Billy the Kid, Davy Crockett, Robin Hood, Tarzan or Satan, you have to accept that the movie about you is likely not as good or memorable as the one about your dad. Read more

Nancy Churnin, Dallas Morning News: It's not just an absence of Mr. Carrey that poses the problem. It's an absence of an intriguing story. Read more

Chuck Wilson, L.A. Weekly: While director Lawrence Guterman (Cats & Dogs) offers some nice moments ... most of the animated sequences, capably mixed with live action, leave a bad aftertaste. Read more

Gene Seymour, Newsday: A perfectly good six-minute animated short is taffy-pulled and inflated beyond reason or tolerance. Read more

Lisa Rose, Newark Star-Ledger: It's all very juvenile, yet there's a level of imagination one wouldn't expect from such fluff. It's the sort of visionary immaturity that bridges generations. Read more

Jack Mathews, New York Daily News: What the filmmakers missed in assuming the mask from the earlier film is that it was Carrey's astonishing physical comedy that made that film a hit, not the animation. Read more

Dana Stevens, New York Times: Son of the Mask is an irredeemable mess, a computer-animated Punch and Judy show without wit, heart or a single memorable performance. Read more

Roger Moore, Orlando Sentinel: Guterman falls into the same trap he set for himself in the equally lifeless Cats & Dogs. There's nothing funny going on around those zany visuals. Read more

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times: What we basically have here is a license for the filmmakers to do whatever they want to do with the special effects, while the plot, like Wile E. Coyote, keeps running into the wall. Read more

Jeff Strickler, Minneapolis Star Tribune: Jim Carrey doesn't go anywhere near this follow-up to his 1994 blockbuster, and neither should viewers. Read more

Susan Walker, Toronto Star: With so many cuts a second, all attention goes into following the visuals. Just as well, since the story leaves so little to work with. Read more

Mike Clark, USA Today: Icky and incompetent (special effects aside) in equal parts, this groaner makes 1994's The Mask look like something you'd study in a film graduate course at NYU. Read more

Brian Lowry, Variety: A truly numbing experience. Read more

Mark Holcomb, Village Voice: The movie is built around these ostensibly kid-friendly fracases, but at its heart is a deep, unresolved ambivalence about child rearing. Read more

Michael O'Sullivan, Washington Post: A film top-heavy with joyless Tex Avery-style special effects and a dancing-baby bit embarrassingly reminiscent of TV's Ally McBeal. Read more