- 8
...manages to hit every mark and gives us a rare blockbuster that should please viewers of all types.
—Luke Y. Thompson E!
- 8
Granted, the concept may not be terribly novel, but the cast is great, the effects are delightfully whimsical, and the story never bores.
—Alynda Wheat People
- 7
It's safe to say that imaginative kids who felt deflated after trudging through M. Night Shyamalan's The Last Airbender will find the movie-making magic tricks they've been waiting for here. Parents may find certain sequences loud and overbearing. That, of course, will make the kids like it even more.
—Sean O'Connell filmcritic.com
- 6
Cage will likely not earn a second Oscar here, but he and director Jon Turteltaub (National Treasure) make leftovers into fine PG malarkey with their hokey naïveté and prankish hocus-pocus.
—Nick Pinkerton Village Voice
- 6
...isn't bad as these things go. It's more diverting than the National Treasure movies, which, like this one, were produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, were directed with aggressive impersonality by Jon Turteltaub and starred Nicolas Cage.
—Michael Phillips Chicago Tribune
- 6
...It's all sugar and caffeine, no nutrition. In place of a plot, there's a premise; in place of carefully crafted action, there are stupefying exercises in computer-generated imagery, and in place of an ending, there's a hook for the sequel...
—Roger Ebert Chicago Sun-Times
- 6
...too long, and it's ersatz magic, but at least it casts an ersatz spell.
—Owen Gleiberman Entertainment Weekly
- 5
...But while Mr. Molina and Mr. Cage supply a measure of well-compensated eccentricity, their labors ultimately serve to emphasize the grinding mediocrity of the enterprise.
—A. O. Scott New York Times
- 5
...Cage is amusingly skanky, Molina is dependably arch, and Baruchel is engagingly down to earth. But do we really need to watch them play out this exhaustingly empty scenario? And do we really need another franchise from Jerry Bruckheimer? Vote with your feet.
—Peter Rainer Christian Science Monitor
- 5
...another slapdash, lazy, and just plain dumb fantasy that targets prepubescent boys still convinced that grand adventures await them once they grow up.
—SImon Abrams Slant Magazine
- 4
...feel(s) strangely like 1985's Young Sherlock Holmes, another film about name-checking familiar fictional characters and eagerly hopping from one amiably overblown, often clunky special-effects setpiece to the next.
—Tasha Robinson Onion AV Club
- 4
The disjointed plot is a mélange of clichés with logic that feels conjured up on the spot. Magical legends are cobbled together as if by someone in Screenwriting 101.
—Claudia Puig USA Today
- 4
...one long wish fulfillment fantasy that might hypnotize some boy and girls, but not all. It?s too thundering and frightening for very little kids, and too silly and unsophisticated for those on the cusp of eye-rolling adolescence.
—John DeVore Premiere
- 3
A noisy, f/x-spewing cauldron of a movie...
—Justin Chang Variety
- 3
Cage and Baruchel work hard to stay accessible, but the computer-generated effects come on like heavy artillery blowing away any hint of flesh and blood.
—Peter Travers Rolling Stone
- 3
...a two-hour trailer: explosion, shape-shift, chase, wisecrack, repeat. Its most amazing trick will be how it vanishes from your memory before the seat you vacate has stopped moving.
—Kyle Smith New York Post
- 2
A tired relic of summer-movie cliches ... Apprentice lurches from one been-there-done-that sequence to another.
—Kirk Honeycutt Hollywood Reporter