Name : Peter Howell / Alias : Toronto Star
A delayed and dismal attempt to marry screwball comedy with socially aware drama.

Name : Tom Long / Alias : Detroit News
Where to begin with Aloha? Begin by not going to the movie.

Name : Stephen Whitty / Alias : Newark Star-Ledger
At least this feels like a Cameron Crowe movie.

Name : Chris Vognar / Alias : Dallas Morning News
Aloha, for all its spasms of charm, feels like a push-button romance, its heroes glibly spouting lines with the hope that the words come to mean something.

Name : Bill Goodykoontz / Alias : Arizona Republic
It's a big soap opera set against blastoffs, none of which is convincing.

Name : Bilge Ebiri / Alias : New York Magazine/Vulture
It comes at us in choppy bursts of brilliance and dopiness. That is at once its great charm and its great curse.

Name : Gwynedd Stuart / Alias : Chicago Reader
Even if this were well made in a technical sense, it would still be a weird heap of patriotism, astronomy, and Hawaiian folklore, piled atop a pat and predictable love story.

Name : Richard Roeper / Alias : Chicago Sun-Times
Aloha is a great-looking movie with just enough bright spots to get us past the cloudy moments.

Name : Rafer Guzman / Alias : Newsday
"Aloha" is one of those films whose characters behave and speak so irrationally that they no longer make any human sense at all. Crowe may have had us at hello, but he's losing us with "Aloha."

Name : Rene Rodriguez / Alias : Miami Herald
This is the kind of film that is easier to mock than to grapple with on its own terms. It's littered with flaws, but sometimes those movies can be the most interesting ones. The Aloha cult fan club is officially open. I'll take one ticket, please.

Name : Christy Lemire / Alias : RogerEbert.com
"Aloha" feels like several films at once, crammed together and sped up, with results that are emotionally hollow and narratively confusing.

Name : Mark Olsen / Alias : Los Angeles Times
Even with its off-balance, overstuffed storytelling, the film maintains a charm and energy that never flags, with brisk pacing and generally engaging performances from its deep-bench cast.

Name : Michael Phillips / Alias : Chicago Tribune
The first encounter among Cooper, McAdams and Stone is so awkward and unsettled that it becomes the movie's own albatross. There are some moments, most of them thanks to McAdams.

Name : Colin Covert / Alias : Minneapolis Star Tribune
How delightful to see a film that begins and closes in outer space be so warmly stargazing.

Name : Joe Williams / Alias : St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Blessed with a stellar cast and idyllic locale, Crowe seems reluctant to waste anything, including his own half-baked themes.

Name : Alonso Duralde / Alias : TheWrap
The deepest understanding we get of any of these characters is that none of them would say the things that Crowe makes come out of their mouths.

Name : Ann Hornaday / Alias : Washington Post
Aloha is such an inchoate mess, such a forced, insular, self-pleasing misfire, that plotting it out can be a challenge.

Name : Alan Scherstuhl / Alias : Village Voice
Cameron Crowe writes movies like he's calling us in eighth grade with his heart on fire.

Name : Sheri Linden / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
If Aloha's earthbound elements are uneven, its rocket-launch aspects are downright confounding.

Name : A.A. Dowd / Alias : AV Club
Perhaps the energy Crowe could have expended on shaping believable characters went instead to the cultural context.

Name : Mick LaSalle / Alias : San Francisco Chronicle
Crowe introduces a serious topic without really examining it, and even the romance feels off, with a pair of lovers who seem mismatched. To complete the picture, Crowe tags on an ending that's convenient but not convincing.

Name : A.O. Scott / Alias : New York Times
The plot is a hash when it's not a drag, and the 100-odd-minute cut of the film arriving in theaters on Friday seems hacked from something longer and baggier.

Name : Peter Travers / Alias : Rolling Stone
Filmmaker Cameron Crowe can't catch a break with Aloha, a Hawaii-set romcom that is a handful of stories struggling for a unifying tone, but is nowhere near as toxic as its advance buzz.

Name : Nathan Rabin / Alias : Globe and Mail
Aloha is a marshmallow of a film: soft on the inside, soft on the outside and wholly devoid of substance.

Name : James Berardinelli / Alias : ReelViews
It's hard to find a level on which Aloha works. It's a murky, muddled mess.

Name : Steven Rea / Alias : Philadelphia Inquirer
For all the screwball patter, smart-aleck similes, and zingy one-liners that Crowe has handed his mismatched cast, a kerplunking emptiness runs through Aloha.

Name : Lisa Kennedy / Alias : Denver Post
This is a romantic comedy that has more than hearts on its mind. In addition to teasing the uneasy and complicated partnership of the military and the private sector, Crowe takes on issues integral to Hawaii.

Name : Andrew Barker / Alias : Variety
Unbalanced, unwieldy, and at times nearly unintelligible, Aloha is unquestionably Cameron Crowe's worst film.

Name : Joe Neumaier / Alias : New York Daily News
"Aloha" isn't horrible, but it does have a pitiable odor about it, like a dog that's sat too long on the beach.

Name : Sara Stewart / Alias : New York Post
There are grand, romantic speeches that will endure forever from Crowe's earlier work - "Jerry Maguire," "Say Anything . . ." - but you can't build an entire movie on them. Nobody wants two hours of "You had me at hello."

Name : Wesley Morris / Alias : Grantland
None of this "works." But it usually worked on me.

Name : Lindsey Bahr / Alias : Associated Press
Another fascinating mess from an earnest and occasionally excellent filmmaker who can't seem to recreate the enveloping magic and charm of his earlier films.

Name : Moira MacDonald / Alias : Seattle Times
The result is a movie that's well-meaning but nearly unwatchable. Stay home and watch a better Crowe movie instead, and ponder what went wrong.

Name : Joe Morgenstern / Alias : Wall Street Journal
I've never seen a movie quite like Aloha. That's meant neither as praise nor as a backhanded compliment; it's offered more in the spirit of one hand clapping.

Name : Chris Nashawaty / Alias : Entertainment Weekly
It happens. Really talented directors sometimes step into the batter's box, take a gigantic swing, and whiff.

Name : Ty Burr / Alias : Boston Globe
"Aloha" is as generic as its title. The islands exist solely as an exotic backdrop for the pretty Hollywood haoles to play in. Business as usual, and I never thought I'd say that about a Cameron Crowe movie.

Name : Andrew Lapin / Alias : NPR
Crowe displays a willingness to reach for ambitious ideas and big-hearted, emotionally naked moments that other name-brand filmmakers are too terrified to explore. Aloha is a big mess, but it's also at war with American cynicism, and wars get messy.

Name : Preston Jones / Alias : Fort Worth Star-Telegram/DFW.com
Now, Cameron Crowe's name above the title feels less like an invitation, and more like a warning.

Name : Peter Rainer / Alias : Christian Science Monitor
Crowe is deft at keeping the various plots spinning, but there are too many of them, and they don't intersect pleasingly.

Name : Sandy Cohen / Alias : Associated Press
The issue is the story. It's not just uneven, it's often unfunny: tinged with homophobia and centered on a wholly unlikeable, self-absorbed man.

Name : Richard Brody / Alias : New Yorker
[A] queasy, schematic, wanly sentimental comedy .

Name : Peter Travers / Alias : Rolling Stone
Some critics are getting all up in the face of this audacious dark comedy for, well, being audacious. What are we supposed think about a movie that doesn't conform to formula? I'd start with grateful.

Name : Colin Covert / Alias : Minneapolis Star Tribune
A bromantic comedy with a sharp edge of melancholy, this indie casts Jack Black and James Marsden in the sort of parts they play frequently, then pushes them toward pathos.

Name : Kyle Smith / Alias : New York Post
"The D Train" is a good-humored, warm-hearted movie in which Black, as usual, excels.

Name : Barbara VanDenburgh / Alias : Arizona Republic
The film goes off the beaten path to tell a very familiar story in an unfamiliar way, turning the mismatched buddy dynamic Black and Marsden had developed into something much more complicated and interesting.

Name : Rafer Guzman / Alias : Newsday
"The D Train" may be a scant and rather unconvincing comedy, but it deserves credit for taking a risk.

Name : Robert Abele / Alias : Los Angeles Times
A recognizably delusional schlub sits at the center of the loser comedy "The D Train," thanks to the sad-sack acumen of Jack Black.

Name : Rene Rodriguez / Alias : Miami Herald
The movie flirts with a great darkness about disillusionment and self-loathing even as it races around spinning comedic plates. Too bad the filmmakers lose their nerve by film's end.

Name : Katharine Pushkar / Alias : New York Daily News
Black's narcissistic, obsessive, stunted Dan is so careless about all his relationships - with his wife, son, boss - that you wonder how he ever had them in the first place.

Name : Moira MacDonald / Alias : Seattle Times
Writer/directors Jarrad Paul and Andrew Mogel let the movie run out of steam a bit before its ending (things get weirdly gooey), but Black keeps us hanging on as "The D Train" swerves; you hope that, somehow, he'll get through the journey safely.

Name : David Ehrlich / Alias : Time Out
The D Train ultimately generates so few laughs from its thin "be yourself" message that a commendable refusal to gawk at the gay stuff is all that keeps it on track.

Name : Joe Williams / Alias : St. Louis Post-Dispatch
While Black is painfully effective as the dork who drops slangy kudos on his new BFF, Marsden is a revelation.

Name : Richard Roeper / Alias : Chicago Sun-Times
Nothing about "The D Train" feels the least bit authentic, and worse, little about it is funny. That's a deadly recipe for a dark comedy.

Name : Tom Long / Alias : Detroit News
A cringe-filled comic rumination on the cost of being cool, "The D Train" starts out as straight silliness and then turns to more aching matters.

Name : Bilge Ebiri / Alias : New York Magazine/Vulture
The last act of The D Train becomes a hilarious, deeply weird, and ultimately touching medley of delusion, humiliation, and friendship.

Name : Mark Jenkins / Alias : NPR
The filmmakers proceed as if they're making a conventional high-school comedy, papering over the holes in the script with pop songs.

Name : Alan Scherstuhl / Alias : Village Voice
The D Train has one great idea, a couple strong jokes, and a void at its center - a man who is only believable when he briefly becomes specific.

Name : Claudia Puig / Alias : USA Today
The D Train is long on high-concept comedy, then runs out of steam and becomes a forced and far-fetched drama.

Name : Ben Sachs / Alias : Chicago Reader
For a vulgar American comedy, this is refreshingly low-key and generous. I admired its intentions without finding it all that funny.

Name : John Anderson / Alias : Wall Street Journal
While it dwells in a much darker realm than American humor generally ventures into, what it uncovers is worth a stare. Maybe even a shudder.

Name : Mike D'Angelo / Alias : AV Club
It's a mess, but it's a commendable mess. Bonus points for ambition and nerve.

Name : Manohla Dargis / Alias : New York Times
For long stretches, "The D Train" serves as a commodious vehicle for Mr. Black, who, like the best comic performers, never seems remotely concerned about going too big or risking the audience's love.

Name : Justin Chang / Alias : Variety
Edgy and soft, audacious and coy, a largely enjoyable letdown.

Name : Tom Russo / Alias : Boston Globe
Any real resonance gets swallowed up by a story that's excruciatingly uncomfortable rather than genuinely funny.

Name : Rex Reed / Alias : New York Observer
So many t's are uncrossed and i's undotted that the movie is a mess. Still, I was fascinated by what it might have been.

Name : James Berardinelli / Alias : ReelViews
Andrew Mogel and Jarrad Paul, making their directorial debut, manage the difficult task of keeping the audience engaged even though both of the main characters are unlikable.

Name : Mick LaSalle / Alias : San Francisco Chronicle
It should be obvious by now that Black is much more than a funny fellow. This is a good actor with a particular strength at playing protected, disturbed personalities - secretly angry people trying with all their might to be something they're not.

Name : Ann Hornaday / Alias : Washington Post
"The D Train" is far from perfect - up to and including the waste of Kathryn Hahn in a lifeless, stereotypical role as Dan's wife - but it has its moments. And most of them belong to Marsden.

Name : Todd McCarthy / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
Some may buy it, but from several perspectives what takes place simply seems beyond the pale dramatically; it's hard to believe things would go as far as they do.

Name : James Rocchi / Alias : TheWrap
Black gives a career-highlight performance as an all-too-regular-guy tripped up by fame, fear, bad high school memories and a diabolically charming James Marsden in a strange, sharp comedy.