Name : Steven Rea / Alias : Philadelphia Inquirer
What were Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence thinking? Seriously?

Name : Rex Reed / Alias : New York Observer
Into each life some rain eventually falls, and in a bomb called Serena, golden couple Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence, united for the third time onscreen, arrive soaking wet.

Name : Anthony Lane / Alias : New Yorker
Both actors, gracefully dressed and lightly anguished, draw deep on their professional aplomb in a bid to keep a straight face; the credible, bulked-up pain that Cooper brought to "American Sniper" seems a world away.

Name : Stephanie Merry / Alias : Washington Post
It's painful to watch all that talent get wasted.

Name : Leah Greenblatt / Alias : Entertainment Weekly
Ah, well. All the best actors eventually get their Ishtar, right?

Name : Ty Burr / Alias : Boston Globe
It's reassuring, really, to be reminded that top-tier Hollywood stars can make lousy choices just like the rest of us.

Name : Geoff Pevere / Alias : Globe and Mail
One of those movies that proves that the mere presence of all the right ingredients does not a happy meal make. It's all in the mixing.

Name : Inkoo Kang / Alias : TheWrap
Densely packed and gorgeously expressionist, the old-fashioned tragedy is very nearly a satisfying experience despite its various shortcomings.

Name : Peter Howell / Alias : Toronto Star
A Depression-era potboiler starring Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence that never manages to get past the feeling of a calculated Hollywood reunion.

Name : Joe Neumaier / Alias : New York Daily News
Lawrence is the hottest actress in Hollywood and she and Cooper share six Oscar nominations, and one win, between them. But "Serena" uses muscles the costars of "Silver Linings Playbook" and "American Hustle" stars don't often get to flex.

Name : Gary Goldstein / Alias : Los Angeles Times
The performers are as beautiful to look at here as they are intriguing to watch.

Name : Serena Donadoni / Alias : Village Voice
By making Serena ornamental, Bier diminishes her power, and Lawrence plays her as a petulant Lady Macbeth wannabe. Worse is Bradley Cooper, whose Pemberton comes off like an entitled scion, not a clear-cut timber king.

Name : Manohla Dargis / Alias : New York Times
The actors don't just look uncomfortable in their period duds, they also look uneasy in their own skins, which is a feat for two such natural, physically confident screen performers.

Name : Guy Lodge / Alias : Variety
Bier's Danish-language work, usually structurally and emotionally cohesive to a fault, has rarely been this compellingly untidy.

Name : Mick LaSalle / Alias : San Francisco Chronicle
Funny how there are fans of Jennifer Lawrence who will never see her in "Serena." It's not her best film, but it contains one of her best performances, in a role that challenges her more than any other.

Name : Joe Williams / Alias : St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Although the film got stuck in editing limbo for two years, no amount of cutting could rid the project of a diseased premise. Nor is it erotic or violent enough to be an effective critique of human nature.

Name : Randy Myers / Alias : San Jose Mercury News
The film is haunted by a sense that something was overlooked in translation from the book.

Name : Vadim Rizov / Alias : AV Club
There's simply not that much to see in the performances.

Name : Richard Corliss / Alias : TIME Magazine
Filmed in 2012 and finally limping into theaters like a glamorous zombie, the movie has star wattage but zero emotional voltage.

Name : Cath Clarke / Alias : Time Out
We don't invest anything in either character, and with barely any tension, 'Serena' grabs neither head nor heart.

Name : Lou Lumenick / Alias : New York Post
The choppily edited and thoroughly wooden "Serena'' fails to catch fire, even when everything literally goes up in flames. Basically, it's "Cold Mountain" without Renee Zellweger.

Name : Wesley Morris / Alias : Grantland
Absolutely nothing works. No one seems to understand the place or the people. And the only thing gleaned from the lumber industry is that you can build an entire movie from performances made of wood.

Name : Peter Rainer / Alias : Christian Science Monitor
Given these unpromising circumstances, I was expecting something truly awful, and perhaps that might have been more fun to watch than this lugubrious period piece. The production values and the costumes are the true stars.

Name : Charlie Lyne / Alias : New York Magazine/Vulture
This is a film full of unremarkable compromises - the kind that result in a bland film rather than a bad one.

Name : Stephen Dalton / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
Serena only has one key flaw: it is difficult to believe a single word of it, still less to care about these relentlessly selfish and short-sighted characters.

Name : Peter Travers / Alias : Rolling Stone
Left for dead since 2012, Serena would better serve its stars by burial, not resurrection.

Name : Richard Roeper / Alias : Chicago Sun-Times
In other words, a lot of people realized they had an epic clunker on their hands.

Name : Joe Morgenstern / Alias : Wall Street Journal
Beating a dead horse barely begins to describe the task of writing about "Serena"; it's more like playing coroner.

Name : Kyle Smith / Alias : New York Post
As a comedy, "The Brothers Grimsby" is weak and scattershot, but it's useful as an unintended self-indictment of the chattering classes' disgust and disdain for white working folk.

Name : Tim Grierson / Alias : The New Republic
The movie has plenty of terrible scenes but also three very, very funny ones. I laughed a lot during those three moments, sometimes rather guiltily, but barely managed more than a chuckle elsewhere.

Name : Robert Abele / Alias : Los Angeles Times
It's not unfunny in spots, but it huffs and puffs (among other bodily functions) more often than it splits the sides.

Name : Darren Franich / Alias : Entertainment Weekly
God help me, I laughed.

Name : Gersh Kuntzman / Alias : New York Daily News
Full disclosure: I was the lone critic in America to unabashedly recommend "Zoolander 2," so I'm certainly not ashamed to even less abashedly beg you to go see "The Brothers Grimsby."

Name : Peter Howell / Alias : Toronto Star
His obsession with anal cavities and what goes in and comes out of them suggest Cohen is auditioning to be the after-dinner amusement at a proctologists' convention.

Name : Manohla Dargis / Alias : New York Times
While there may be comedy gold in an elephant's vagina, Mr. Cohen fails to find it here.

Name : Amy Nicholson / Alias : MTV
Grimsby's balls - actual balls - broke my dignity.

Name : Jesse Hassenger / Alias : AV Club
The movie's scant 83 minutes dictate that The Brothers Grimsby proceed impatiently; the movie feels cut to fit the running time, rather than for the effectiveness of either the story or the comedy.

Name : Peter Travers / Alias : Rolling Stone
Sacha Baron Cohen's new comedy brings the raunch - but the sharp satire is M.I.A.

Name : Leslie Felperin / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
Baron Cohen and Strong are both robustly physical performers, and their finest moments are when they're grappling with each other, producing a great tangle of limbs and teeth. But the script. is not especially generous to the other members of the cast.

Name : James Berardinelli / Alias : ReelViews
A production that fails in every way at every turn.

Name : Tim Cogshell / Alias : TheWrap
Do note, it's not dumb. Stupid, occasionally, but never dumb, not even when our heroes are inside the elephant vagina.

Name : Stephen Whitty / Alias : Newark Star-Ledger
"Grimsby" punches down - at the sick, at the poor, at anyone who's not quick enough to get out of its sloppy roundhouse rights. Boy, chronically unemployed drunks sure are funny, aren't they?

Name : Anthony Lane / Alias : New Yorker
Sacha Baron Cohen takes a backward lurch.

Name : Brian Truitt / Alias : USA Today
At the very least, it's more entertaining than the time Baron Cohen dumped ashes on Ryan Seacrest at the Oscars but only barely.

Name : Rene Rodriguez / Alias : Miami Herald
Compared to glib junk like Zoolander 2, The Brothers Grimsby is practically high art.

Name : Lindsey Bahr / Alias : Associated Press
Ultimately, the jokes are more stupefying than funny and no one's anatomy is safe from a gratuitous close-up, whether it's that of a wild animal or an Oscar nominee.

Name : Bilge Ebiri / Alias : Village Voice
Mostly, The Brothers Grimsby simply wants to make you laugh. And it will.

Name : Dave Calhoun / Alias : Time Out
Chaotic and crude - but its lack of sophistication feels like a badge of honour.

Name : Guy Lodge / Alias : Variety
A smutty but strained spy spoof in which most of the human-based comedy stays comparatively flaccid.