Name : Bilge Ebiri / Alias : New York Magazine/Vulture
There's something mythic about the story unfolding before us, but the film avoids self-importance.

Name : Moira MacDonald / Alias : Seattle Times
"Cop Car" has two kids at its center, but don't mistake this taut, wicked little thriller for a children's film.

Name : Mike D'Angelo / Alias : AV Club
Watts demonstrates a sadistic patience that's refreshing, especially compared to the usual blockbuster breathlessness.

Name : Kyle Smith / Alias : New York Post
Scenes that should take 30 seconds take three minutes. Writer-director Jon Watts does successfully channel childhood, though: He's like a kid short of ideas who triple-spaces his book report.

Name : Robert Abele / Alias : Los Angeles Times
There's no denying Watts' skill at a certain kind of desolate cat and mouse, but it's in the service of what is ultimately a somewhat heartless exercise.

Name : Richard Roeper / Alias : Chicago Sun-Times
[Cop Car features] the most evil monologue of the year. Perfectly, horribly, fantastically chilling.

Name : Todd McCarthy / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
A potentially fun premise soon turns into no fun at all in Cop Car, a seriously imagination-challenged low-end action thriller.

Name : Stephen Whitty / Alias : Newark Star-Ledger
What feels like an accidental mashup of two great pop styles - "Stand By the Killer Inside Me" - soon turns into a nice, grim little entertainment all its own.

Name : Bill Goodykoontz / Alias : Arizona Republic
Bacon can play just about anything, and he's having a good time here as a guy not quite smart enough to keep himself out of trouble, but wily enough to try to dig himself out of it. It's fun to watch.

Name : Wesley Morris / Alias : Grantland
As a woodland lark that darkens into a road thriller, this movie more or less works. It's simultaneously preposterous and smart.

Name : Jordan Hoffman / Alias : New York Daily News
Despite the real, bloody stakes, "Cop Car" keeps a boyish sense of action and adventure through to a twist ending. You have a right to remain thrilled.

Name : Peter Keough / Alias : Boston Globe
With his sense of black humor and with a coldly calculating view of a world determined by intransigent laws of physics, Watts recalls the Coen brothers of "Blood Simple."

Name : Michael O'Sullivan / Alias : Washington Post
"Cop Car" builds up a nice, suspenseful head of steam, mixing dark comedy and true creepiness in such a way that one mood never overwhelms the other.

Name : Alan Scherstuhl / Alias : Village Voice
The film soars early as a fantasy steeped in life and crashes into a drag of a crime drama, one ripped from the movies rather than anyone's idea of small-town Colorado.

Name : Manohla Dargis / Alias : New York Times
Part of what makes "Cop Car" such easy viewing is that it doesn't ask much of you narratively or ethically.

Name : Chris Nashawaty / Alias : Entertainment Weekly
Cop Car feels like a great short stretched into a mediocre feature.

Name : Peter Debruge / Alias : Variety
B-movie gold.

Name : Ann Hornaday / Alias : Washington Post
Although her charisma is still undeniable, there's also no denying that McCarthy is capable of much more than she's allowing herself to do here. There comes a point when every force of nature starts to look just plain forced.

Name : Brian Truitt / Alias : USA Today
A free-for-all of inappropriate language unsuitable for even the most crass boy's-club boardroom, The Boss can't quite decide if warming the heart or obliterating it with insults is the end goal.

Name : Rafer Guzman / Alias : Newsday
A hit-and-miss comedy, but McCarthy leads a game cast through several memorable moments.

Name : Joe Dziemianowicz / Alias : New York Daily News
"The Boss" doesn't work.

Name : Dan Callahan / Alias : TheWrap
It isn't comedy, and it isn't drama, much less comedy-drama.

Name : Mara Reinstein / Alias : Us Weekly
The gifted Melissa McCarthy has spent the bulk of her post-Bridesmaids career elevating so-so material. Add this raunchy comedy to the pile of mediocrity.

Name : Tom Russo / Alias : Boston Globe
The loosey-goosey fun might be a bit much at the finish, but it's still a laugh watching McCarthy try to get back on her feet.

Name : Peter Howell / Alias : Toronto Star
Did you ever think only male comics could obsess over infantile boob, crotch and sex jokes? The Boss will set you straight on that delusion, too.

Name : Manohla Dargis / Alias : New York Times
Sometimes it's pleasurable enough just watching the most unlikely American comedy star since Bill Murray slip into a groove.

Name : Barbara VanDenburgh / Alias : Arizona Republic
There are brief bursts of hilarity, and they are all, without exception, owed to McCarthy's innate charisma and comedic timing.

Name : Leah Pickett / Alias : Chicago Reader
Dinklage is awful as the foppish villain, and aside from one uproarious, ad-libbed riff, McCarthy seems to be on autopilot.

Name : David Lewis / Alias : San Francisco Chronicle
"The Boss'' provides the talented Melissa McCarthy plenty of scenery to comically chew on - she is very funny at times - but the story is paper-thin, and the script gives much of the supporting cast the proverbial pink slip.

Name : Sara Stewart / Alias : New York Post
McCarthy shines when loosely riffing, but the plot tightens around her like a vise.

Name : Stephanie Zacharek / Alias : TIME Magazine
McCarthy deserves better than this. She can aim higher.

Name : Leah Greenblatt / Alias : Entertainment Weekly
A few moments are fantastically bonkers, but granting director duties to McCarthy's husband, Ben Falcone, feels more like an act of love than wisdom.

Name : Jim Slotek / Alias : Toronto Sun
Well, they can't all be Bridesmaids.

Name : Richard Roeper / Alias : Chicago Sun-Times
It's just early April, but I have an early contender for the most loathsome, ill-advised, horrible executed, most spectacularly unfunny movie scene of the year.

Name : Will Leitch / Alias : The New Republic
By making McCarthy the center of every scene without giving her an actual character to play, Falcone and McCarthy require her to carry more weight that anyone possibly could.

Name : Brad Wheeler / Alias : Globe and Mail
This is a lazy Melissa McCarthy vehicle that relies on relentless potty-mouth moments - it's so funny when otherwise decorous characters continually do the vulgar! - and the pratfall comedy of McCarthy.

Name : Joshua Rothkopf / Alias : Time Out
Even though The Boss is co-written by McCarthy and her husband, director Ben Falcone (who should know his wife's strengths better), the film often strands its title character in shrill one-note caricature, mostly unchallenged.

Name : Jesse Hassenger / Alias : AV Club
A lot of The Boss works because Michelle Darnell is a funny character, and McCarthy is funny playing her.

Name : Adam Graham / Alias : Detroit News
"The Boss" never feels like more than a series of bawdy, R-rated sketches held together by bubble gum and masking tape.

Name : Mark Olsen / Alias : Los Angeles Times
It is hard to think of a movie squandering the opportunity of a perfectly timed cultural moment quite like "The Boss."

Name : Andrew Lapin / Alias : NPR
Nothing in the storyline, direction or character types is remotely fresh.

Name : Michael Phillips / Alias : Chicago Tribune
"The Boss" has zero finesse as a comedy. When Darnell crashes into a wall, or takes a tumble down the stairs, it's alarming and painful, as opposed to funny.

Name : Justin Chang / Alias : Variety
McCarthy remains one of the funniest actors alive - a truth that frequently rescues, but doesn't really redeem, this sloppy comedy .

Name : Molly Eichel / Alias : Philadelphia Inquirer
McCarthy is such a comedic powerhouse that she can play Michelle with incredible physicality and slapstick while also imbuing the character with wit, cunning, and even ruthlessness.

Name : Moira MacDonald / Alias : Seattle Times
McCarthy's trademark blend of chipper likability and treble-voiced rage just isn't quite enough to carry things through.

Name : Frank Scheck / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
The Boss feels like an elongated sketch.

Name : Melissa Anderson / Alias : Village Voice
The Boss gives its star few, if any, hitting partners. It's a baffling decision .

Name : Jake Coyle / Alias : Associated Press
As in McCarthy's slipshod road movies Identity Thief and Tammy, the material here isn't on her level, the laughs are largely cheap and once again, the hall-of-fame comic actress is stuck in a minor-league movie.

Name : Peter Travers / Alias : Rolling Stone
McCarthy is a national slapstick treasure, but The Boss is a weak-kneed comedy that would topple without her.

Name : Richard Brody / Alias : New Yorker
The movie is all too neat a package for McCarthy's exuberantly inventive comic artistry.

Name : Colin Covert / Alias : Minneapolis Star Tribune
World-class gumption and an on-camera look that the pretty committee would applaud can't save a poorly executed comedy whose essential elements are dirty words and falling down.

Name : Stephen Whitty / Alias : Newark Star-Ledger
McCarthy is great - foul-mouthed, funny and fierce. And for those of us who suffered painfully (yet hopefully) through things like "Identity Thief," the movie feels like a healthy step forward.

Name : Peter Rainer / Alias : Christian Science Monitor
I persist in believing that Melissa McCarthy is capable of starring in a movie that not only makes a scads of money but is - you know - good. The latest refutation of my belief is The Boss.