A mess.
- David Denby, New Yorker, March 26, 2012
At times the spectacle is captivating, but it's always just a bit too silly.
- Jason Di Rosso, MovieTime, ABC Radio National, March 09, 2012
Director Andrew Stanton, making his first live-action feature after the successful Pixar animated films FINDING NEMO and WALL-E, hasn't been able to bring anything very new to the familiar story of battles among rival forces on another planet:
- David Stratton, At the Movies (Australia), March 09, 2012
Stanton should go back to making machines talk. He puts much more humanity into them than he manages to extract from Burroughs, even with all that nostalgia working for him.
- Sandra Hall, Sydney Morning Herald, March 09, 2012
John Carter's hard-to-follow story and terrible dialogue leaves it on par with that cheesy Flash Gordon remake from the 1980s.
- Leigh Paatsch, Herald Sun (Australia), March 09, 2012
Despite occasional moments of silliness, the old-fashioned sense of adventure and brilliantly rendered aliens elevate this above other derivative big-budget sci-fi fare.
- Erin Free, FILMINK (Australia), March 09, 2012
There's a delightfully unfashionable cheesiness about John Carter, a film for all the family, but in particular sci-fi fantasy geeks and older gentlemen who have never been able to relinquish the spiffing derring-do of Burroughs.
- Kate Muir, Times [UK], March 09, 2012
The most indelible performance in the film is not, strictly speaking, a performance at all. Rather it is Woola, a six-legged Martian hound who rather resembles a cross between a bulldog and a fetal gila monster.
- Christopher Orr, The Atlantic, March 09, 2012
The reported $250 million price tag for John Carter gives one pause. I suppose one could argue that masterpieces have no price. Then again, John Carter is no masterpiece.
- Peter Rainer, Christian Science Monitor, March 09, 2012
Where John Carter continually gets it right is pacing, levity, and breadth of story.
- Laremy Legel, Film.com, March 09, 2012
Whenever the fighting stops and two people have to stand and talk, all the air goes out of everything. Suddenly it feels as if we're in an empty theater, watching a dusty old sword-and-sandal epic.
- Stephen Whitty, Newark Star-Ledger, March 09, 2012
It isn't bad so much as innocuous, $250-million worth of innocuous, framed by a decent start and a solid finish but sagging through the long middle like a cheap mattress.
- Rick Groen, Globe and Mail, March 09, 2012
Though messy and overlong, it's an enjoyable throwback to the movie spectacles of a more innocent age.
- Rafer Guzman, Newsday, March 09, 2012
"John Carter" is a huge bore.
- Tom Long, Detroit News, March 09, 2012
Gets off to such an incoherent start that it takes almost the entire, interminable two-hour-plus running time to catch up.
- Ann Hornaday, Washington Post, March 09, 2012
Suffers from a convoluted plot and an anticlimactic resolution, but hits enough high notes along the way to be enjoyable.
- James Berardinelli, ReelViews, March 08, 2012
The villains are overwrought and the design of Mars is surprisingly bland.
- Claudia Puig, USA Today, March 08, 2012
This middle section, in which both Carter and the audience get a crash course in the politics, history, and theology of the Red Planet, is the movie at its most imaginative and most fun.
- Dana Stevens, Slate, March 08, 2012
There's nothing to see, nothing to think about, nothing to care about, and nothing to feel, just emptiness. The emptiness is never filled over the course of 132 long, barren minutes.
- Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle, March 08, 2012
Messy and chaotic ... but also colorful and kind of fun.
- A.O. Scott, New York Times, March 08, 2012
