The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen 2003

Ty Burr, Boston Globe: Much dumber and pulpier than the comic book on which it's based. Read more

Terry Lawson, Detroit Free Press: Yet another ill-considered, explosions-driven summer movie that fails to deliver. Read more

Rene Rodriguez, Miami Herald: The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen feels overly busy, unwieldy and hollow. Read more

Richard Roeper, Ebert & Roeper: This film is odd, loud, unintentionally funny and quite awful. Read more

Moira MacDonald, Seattle Times: The movie, alas, isn't extraordinary at all; it's just dull, a little mystifying, and more than a little cheesy. Read more

Michael Wilmington, Chicago Tribune: If you're in the mood for two hours of carnage, waste and mind-boggling badness, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen could be just your ticket. Read more

Elvis Mitchell, New York Times: Gentlemen may be a better movie than other Connery fantasy-action films like The Avengers, but then again a glass of muddy water looks good to someone just coming in from the desert. Read more

Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader: A stiff. Read more

Eleanor Ringel Gillespie, Atlanta Journal-Constitution: These gentlemen -- and this lady -- are extraordinary indeed. Read more

Manohla Dargis, Los Angeles Times: These guys have dumbed down a comic book. Read more

Eric Harrison, Houston Chronicle: Operates on a similar principle as Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle: Keep throwing things at the audience and edit the action sequences with a Vegematic. Read more

Lisa Kennedy, Denver Post: This film by Stephen Norrington doesn't soar nearly enough above ordinary. Read more

Entertainment Weekly: Basically, we're watching all of these famous names pasted onto a lot of anonymous grade-B acting and limply staged fight scenes. Read more

Gary Dowell, Dallas Morning News: A smart concept that's been dumbed down. Read more

John Patterson, L.A. Weekly: Norrington falls repeatedly into predictable fight sequences and apocalyptic explosions, drowning the few remnants of wit and subtlety under bombast and empty stylistics. Read more

John Anderson, Newsday: The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen may end up being the film that defined the season: underwritten and overwritten, effects-driven, inspired by a comic book and unlikely to drive those on- the-fence audiences back into theaters anytime soon. Read more

Stephen Whitty, Newark Star-Ledger: A concept whose promise is never quite fulfilled. Read more

Jack Mathews, New York Daily News: In a summer of big-budget sequels, prequels, remakes and homages, no film is more ambitiously derivative -- or dramatically unsatisfying -- than Stephen Norrington's The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Read more

James Berardinelli, ReelViews: The experience of watching this movie is a marginal and moderately disappointing one. Read more

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times: Just when it seems about to become a real corker of an adventure movie, [the movie] plunges into incomprehensible action, idiotic dialogue, inexplicable motivations, causes without effects, effects without causes, and general lunacy. Read more

Charles Taylor, Salon.com: Despite Sean Connery and some impressive 19th century gloom, this big-screen translation of Alan Moore's culty comic-book series falls to earth with an incoherent splat. Read more

Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle: The League is a movie to enjoy, then to root for and finally to be disappointed by. Read more

Colin Covert, Minneapolis Star Tribune: A wonderfully old-school adventure. Read more

Rick Groen, Globe and Mail: The concept is high but everything else is merely fair to middling, one more or less watchable B-movie in megabucks clothing. Read more

Geoff Pevere, Toronto Star: This is awfulness of an utterly assembly-line nature. Read more

Derek Adams, Time Out: ... the effects and sets are marvellously fantastical and there are one or two neat comical allusions to the heroes' literary roots. But where's the excitement, the thrills, the tension, the style? Read more

Mike Clark, USA Today: This movie is so boring that the mind floats to extraneous matters ... Read more

Todd McCarthy, Variety: Offers some appealing elements -- exceptionally beautiful design, atypical characters, literacy and an intriguing intellectual basis -- that are ultimately engulfed by explosions, effects and an affiliated ponderousness. Read more

Ed Park, Village Voice: Even if, per Wilde, all art is quite useless, it need not be quite as useless as this. Read more