- 9
...a delightfully bent heartland comedy...
—Lisa Schwarzbaum Entertainment Weekly
- 9
...a low-wattage pleasure...
—Manohla Dargis New York Times
- 8
Peppered with plenty of gags in a tight 87-minute runtime, Cedar Rapids might not be the raunchfest the trailer teases, but that's OK. Rapids is a refreshingly sweet film about characters.
—Peter Paras E!
- 7
...a mild comedy of embarrassment...
—J. Hoberman Village Voice
- 7
...a kind of delayed coming-of-age comedy about a sheltered innocent that in many ways recalls The 40-Year-Old Virgin...
—David Rooney Hollywood Reporter
- 7
Though not as uproarious as The 40-Year-Old Virgin, director Miguel Arteta's consistently entertaining white-collar laffer could do for Helms what that film did for Steve Carell, albeit on a much smaller commercial scale.
—Peter Debruge Variety
- 7
Though the comedy in Cedar Rapids is [director] Arteta's broadest yet, the film reflects the care he takes with his cast, the sort that helped reveal an acting depth no one suspected from Jennifer Aniston in 2002's The Good Girl.
—Betsy Sharkey Los Angeles Times
- 7
...a sweet comedy with a dirty mind...
—Roger Ebert Chicago Sun-Times
- 7
...the cast, anchored by sweetly goofy Ed Helms, redeems the film at every turn, adding humor and dimension to characters who might have otherwise drowned in tacky grotesquerie.
—Scott Tobias Onion AV Club
- 7
Here is a story that works fabulously as a screwball comedy and hints at greater depths in between the zingers, yet just when it hits its dramatic stride, the focus shifts back to rowdy humor. The film is entertaining and immensely watchable, but it could've been much more.
—Jason McKiernan filmcritic.com
- 7
...a mild comedy of embarrassment...
—J. Hoberman LA Weekly
- 7
What the film lacks in energy it makes up for in geniality.
—Michael Phillips Chicago Tribune
- 7
...a genially rowdy comedy that stops short of poking fun at small-town Midwesterners. Like its guileless lead character, the film's heart remains steadfastly in the right place.
—Claudia Puig USA Today
- 7
A modest comedy that springs indecently funny surprises...
—Peter Travers Rolling Stone
- 7
Relentlessly cheerful and arguably a bit too zany...
—Andrew O'Hehir Salon
- 7
...takes an inordinate number of wrong turns ... but it also has an inordinate number of good laughs mixed in with the not-so-good ones.
—Peter Rainer Christian Science Monitor
- 7
It takes a while for the fun onscreen to translate into laughs, but once they start, they don't let up. [21 February 2011, p.36]
—Alynda Wheat People
- 6
...mildly amusing...
—Kyle Smith New York Post
- 5
A noisier but arguably less idiosyncratic experience than attending an actual Midwestern business convention...
—Bill Weber Slant Magazine