Name : Amy Nicholson / Alias : L.A. Weekly
If only Demme had shot a scene of Ricki stubbing out a joint on a "Cathy" comic strip.

Name : Kenneth Turan / Alias : Los Angeles Times
Diablo Cody's dispiriting screenplay is all about everyone coming to love Ricki, faults and all, and that is just not convincingly done.

Name : Sheri Linden / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
Even with its well-observed moments, the movie's nonmusical interactions, whether reaching for laughs or poignancy, too often feel flat and forced.

Name : Richard Roeper / Alias : Chicago Sun-Times
The skilled veteran Demme alternates dysfunctional family confrontations with easy comedy, expertly peppering in just the right rock tunes along the way. It's hard not to like Ricki, but the film makes no excuses for her actions.

Name : Alonso Duralde / Alias : TheWrap
An assemblage of almost-characters in an almost-story, resulting in a very disappointing almost-movie.

Name : Tina Hassannia / Alias : Globe and Mail
Regardless of its flimsy emotional interior, Ricki is a worthy addition in this year's growing canon of strong female-centred films, and it would be wise to remember Streep's stunning performance come awards season.

Name : Peter Rainer / Alias : Christian Science Monitor
Despite Streep's best efforts, Ricki seems more of a contrivance than a flesh-and-blood character.

Name : Peter Howell / Alias : Toronto Star
Worth watching, and rocking to.

Name : Colin Covert / Alias : Minneapolis Star Tribune
Creating a film with solid drama beside good humor is tough. It's harder still to balance them against a complicated character so they don't sprawl lopsided, and to send the audience home feeling satisfied.

Name : Wesley Morris / Alias : Grantland
The film, which Diablo Cody wrote and Jonathan Demme directed, is a work of bulk-size bogusness. Barely a single scene is convincing.

Name : Andrew Barker / Alias : Variety
This is a shaggy, easily distractible film that consistently defies expectations to both charming and baffling effect.

Name : Preston Jones / Alias : Fort Worth Star-Telegram/DFW.com
The film roars to life too intermittently.but, sadly, too much of Ricki and the Flash is just the same old song.

Name : Stephen Whitty / Alias : Newark Star-Ledger
While there are some bright notes in Cody's writing, the situations feel a little tired, and the characters unexplored.

Name : Leah Greenblatt / Alias : Entertainment Weekly
Ricki raises smart questions about why a mother's musical ambitions are so much more selfish than, say, seven-time dad Mick Jagger's, and even the shamelessly corny sing-along finale wrings a few real tears out.

Name : J. R. Jones / Alias : Chicago Reader
The result is cold porridge.

Name : Joe Morgenstern / Alias : Wall Street Journal
There are fleeting moments of real fun. Still, it's hard not to wonder why so much in the movie went so wrong.

Name : Lindsey Bahr / Alias : Associated Press
Ultimately, spending time with these people is pleasant, lived-in, honest and even thought-provoking. And when the dialogue stops, there's a fun, golden not-too-oldies live music soundtrack to hum along with too.

Name : Ignatiy Vishnevetsky / Alias : AV Club
As in Demme's best early work (Handle With Care, Melvin & Howard), there is both an affection for a uniquely American type of oddball and a clear-eyed sense of their foibles.

Name : Peter Travers / Alias : Rolling Stone
Director Jonathan Demme, with music in his DNA, offers a heartfelt salute to those who play the underside of rock & roll because, well, they have to. Too bad the rest of the movie is dime-a-dozen family soap opera.

Name : Joe Neumaier / Alias : New York Daily News
The story here, like a lot of bar bands, goes loud to cover up mediocrity. When Streep sings, though, so does the film.

Name : Steven Rea / Alias : Philadelphia Inquirer
Demme has already made a messed-up family matrimonial get-together way better than this, with a way better screenplay than the one Juno writer Cody has tossed off.

Name : Michael Phillips / Alias : Chicago Tribune
All good protagonists are contradictory tangles of experience and disappointment, but Cody is so tentative in her approach, nothing gathers steam or sticks in emotional terms.

Name : Susanna Schrobsdorff / Alias : TIME Magazine
Streep's latest mom role, as Ricki Rendazzo in Ricki and the Flash, has a light, Mamma Mia! vibe, but it still hits all those hot buttons.

Name : Moira MacDonald / Alias : Seattle Times
Streep's performance, like lightning, jolts everything.

Name : Sara Stewart / Alias : New York Post
The movie itself seems equally divided between the sensibilities of hyperverbal writer Diablo Cody and music-centric director Jonathan Demme, and ends up falling into a muddy gap between the two.

Name : Patrick Dunn / Alias : Detroit News
Streep may have just been looking for some variety and an Oscar. But why is Demme, the great director of "The Silence of the Lambs," wasting his time on this?

Name : Calvin Wilson / Alias : St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Quite a few filmgoers lament the shortage of movies for adults. "Ricki and the Flash" goes against that trend with rock 'n' roll attitude.

Name : Ty Burr / Alias : Boston Globe
"Ricki and the Flash" feels like "Stella Dallas" as remade by Jean Renoir - it's a humanist suburban fable.

Name : Rafer Guzman / Alias : Newsday
Streep and Springfield make a surprisingly sweet pair of retirement-age rockers, but the scattered story line keeps losing the beat.

Name : Bill Goodykoontz / Alias : Arizona Republic
What might have been must be better than what's here, because what's here isn't much.

Name : Spencer Kornhaber / Alias : The Atlantic
Just when the story beats start to feel unbearably obvious, the film changes keys, becoming less family dramedy than a concert film.

Name : Joshua Rothkopf / Alias : Time Out
Streep finds her way to the soul of several songs. There's devastating connection and tears in these moments: delicate gratitude in "Drift Away," nothing short of maternal redemption in a roaring version of Springsteen's "My Love Will Not Let You Down."

Name : David Edelstein / Alias : New York Magazine/Vulture
Ricki and the Flash swerves near stereotypes and swerves away at every turn.

Name : Dana Stevens / Alias : Slate
The screenplay doesn't lack for memorable zingers, and thanks to Cody's script and Streep's performance, Ricki emerges as a complex, self-contradictory person (even if most of the supporting characters don't).

Name : Mick LaSalle / Alias : San Francisco Chronicle
If only Streep would have put down the microphone and let Springfield sing "Jessie's Girl," "Ricki and the Flash" might have had half a chance.

Name : James Berardinelli / Alias : ReelViews
The movie is mature in the way it handles the regrets of absentee parents and the ways in which their children relate to them. There's a little Hollywood artifice here but not so much that the emotions feel inauthentic.

Name : Ann Hornaday / Alias : Washington Post
It's a crowd-pleaser every bit as calculated and earnestly defanged as a Golden Oldies bus-and-truck tour. It's fun while it lasts, even if the Bic lighters stay safely pocketed at the end of the show.

Name : Scott Tobias / Alias : NPR
A warmth radiates through Ricki and the Flash like a song sung true. A film that adores its characters this much is sure to be adored in kind.

Name : A.O. Scott / Alias : New York Times
"Ricki and the Flash" seems like a squandered opportunity for this humane, curious and liberal-minded filmmaker to reflect on some uncomfortable realities. This isn't really rock 'n' roll. It's easy listening.

Name : Claudia Puig / Alias : USA Today
The only redeeming feature about The Gunman is its exotic locations.

Name : Leslie Felperin / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
Ultimately this feels like a vanity project designed to do for Penn's bankability, Africa, Spain and mercenaries what the Taken franchise did for Liam Neeson, Paris and Albanian gangsters.

Name : Richard Roeper / Alias : Chicago Sun-Times
Rarely, though, have two Academy Award-winning actors been so stunningly off the mark in the same movie.

Name : Tony Hicks / Alias : San Jose Mercury News
It devolves into a mess of worn plot lines. If Morel wanted to give Penn's career new life as a world-weary action hero, he missed his target.

Name : Ben Sachs / Alias : Chicago Reader
I can imagine Sean Penn agreeing to star in this Taken knockoff on the condition that it educate moviegoers about humanitarian crises in Africa; it does, but the film feels misshapen as a result.

Name : Peter Rainer / Alias : Christian Science Monitor
I doubt The Gunman will do much to advance Penn's foray into action-hero bankability, and that's probably a good thing. He's too fine an actor to be mired in nonstop shootouts while flashing his pecs and looking scowly.

Name : James Berardinelli / Alias : ReelViews
Penn is dour and not the least bit heroic in this movie. He survives the action sequences but neither they nor his participation in them gets the blood pumping.

Name : Soren Anderson / Alias : Seattle Times
Yes, there are plot holes aplenty, but the action is tautly staged by Morel and that makes "The Gunman" a satisfactory time-passer.

Name : Guy Lodge / Alias : Variety
Sadly, Penn's veiny, sweat-glazed biceps are the most objectively impressive feature of this rote, humorless thriller, a distinctly unconvincing attempt to refashion the star . as a middle-aged action hero in the Liam Neeson mold.

Name : Rene Rodriguez / Alias : Miami Herald
Penn remains a furiously committed method actor, even in a paycheck role such as this one. But he's not enough to prevent the film from becoming the same-old.

Name : Rex Reed / Alias : New York Observer
Unfortunately, nobody ever won an Oscar for washboard abs. And nobody is going to win five seconds of admiration for 115 minutes of tedium in The Gunman.

Name : Rafer Guzman / Alias : Newsday
A lightweight thriller posing as a heavy political drama, or vice-versa. Not thoughtful and no fun.

Name : Joe Neumaier / Alias : New York Daily News
There's a grubby, redemptive quality that makes this tough-minded flick feel like the son of "Serpico" and "Salvador."

Name : Stephanie Zacharek / Alias : Village Voice
Penn's need to be seen as a guy of integrity is left naked in The Gunman, but at least he's having some fun with the action-movie trappings, and with taking his shirt off.

Name : Tom Huddleston / Alias : Time Out
Too often feels like just another slice of brainless Eurotrash, packed with saw-it-coming plot twists, half-hearted car chases and an angsty hero with zero charisma.

Name : Liam Lacey / Alias : Globe and Mail
Like a queasy blend of Still Alice and The Bourne Identity.

Name : Stephen Whitty / Alias : Newark Star-Ledger
The actors are good and the action is thrilling. And if the film isn't quite as seriously political as I'm guessing Penn told himself it was, it's definitely an offbeat change of pace for us.

Name : Peter Keough / Alias : Boston Globe
If the film's intent is to condition the audience into a distaste for violence through boredom, it succeeds.

Name : Jocelyn Noveck / Alias : Associated Press
OK, we've seen the biceps and the abs. Very nice. Now, back to the brain.

Name : Betsy Sharkey / Alias : Los Angeles Times
Part of the contract that movies of this sort forge with moviegoers is that the reasons for all the running and gunning won't get in the way of the action. "The Gunman" doesn't play by those rules.

Name : Andrew O'Hehir / Alias : Salon.com
I've pretty much always enjoyed watching Penn in everything, not despite of his hambone tendency to milk every moment of every shot but because of it. This stupid movie is no exception .

Name : Peter Travers / Alias : Rolling Stone
The Gunman degenerates into dreary setups for guns and gore. Penn merits more. So do we.

Name : Andrew Lapin / Alias : NPR
A dum-dum action picture that briefly pretends to be about world aid before returning to muscular, middle-aged men beating the snot out of each other.

Name : Bill Goodykoontz / Alias : Arizona Republic
"The Gunman" is a predictable slog through action-movie tropes, and Penn's intensity isn't a good fit.

Name : Colin Covert / Alias : Minneapolis Star Tribune
Penn and his fellow actors are fine at conversation, but there are more dialogue-driven subplots here than a movie full of bullets and land mines requires.

Name : Steven Rea / Alias : Philadelphia Inquirer
Obviousness prevails.

Name : Mick LaSalle / Alias : San Francisco Chronicle
It succeeds, partly because the moral climate it presents seems so confused, but mainly because of Penn's particular aura of irascible integrity.

Name : Chris Nashawaty / Alias : Entertainment Weekly
The kind of film that can't be bothered to do any more with its Spanish setting than have a showdown at a bullfight.

Name : Michael Phillips / Alias : Chicago Tribune
It's a tasty cast, but the script does not do its job in crucial areas, letting the audience get way, way out ahead of the reveals.

Name : Christopher Orr / Alias : The Atlantic
A dull, generic retread, made far worse by Penn's self-seriousness as an actor, by the banal political pieties he's grafted on as producer and co-writer, and by the presence of a pitifully retrograde female lead role.

Name : Alonso Duralde / Alias : TheWrap
What begins and ends as an exploration of Western exploitation of the Congo mostly follows the standard track of the retired hit-man who realizes that he hasn't quite yet eluded the sins of the past.

Name : Wesley Morris / Alias : Grantland
I object to The Gunman because it's unconvincing and incoherent.

Name : A.O. Scott / Alias : New York Times
Mr. Penn, aiming for weary, battered intensity, settles into a zone somewhere between fatigue and indigestion.

Name : Peter Howell / Alias : Toronto Star
Whatever else we might think of Sean Penn's bid for an active middle age via The Gunman, we can't doubt his enthusiasm.

Name : Ignatiy Vishnevetsky / Alias : AV Club
The Gunman is too disorganized and sloppy to make sense as political commentary or to work on the most basic level as a globe-trotting chase thriller.

Name : Kyle Smith / Alias : New York Post
Watching Penn pump iron and denounce capitalism for two hours would be roughly as illuminating as this monotonous Euro-thriller.

Name : Joe Williams / Alias : St. Louis Post-Dispatch
A well-executed thriller that leaves us stirred but not shaken.

Name : Ann Hornaday / Alias : Washington Post
"The Gunman" may start as a genre exercise of promising purpose, but it winds up being just a lot of bull.