Robert Wilonsky

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Dallas Observer, New Times (L.A.), Village Voice
For 397 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 31% higher than the average critic
  • 2% same as the average critic
  • 67% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 15.8 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Robert Wilonsky's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 50
Highest review score: 100 Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Lowest review score: 0 Martin Lawrence Live: Runteldat
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 133 out of 397
  2. Mixed: 145 out of 397
  3. Negative: 119 out of 397
397 movie reviews
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    • 58 Metascore
    • 60 Robert Wilonsky
    We Bought a Zoo
    The cynics will scoff and dismiss it all as manipulative, the heartstring-tugging machine on hyperdrive. But this movie isn't for them; did you not see the PG? It's a sweet, sincere, utterly affable kids' movie about how parents are all kinds of screwed up and unable to tell their kids what they want or show them how they feel.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 50 Robert Wilonsky
    Paul
    This is the smart-ass stoner's "E.T.," the movie the fanboy parent won't be able to hand down like some tattered, squeaky-clean memento to their action-figure-collecting kids. It's just not quite right without Wright, who could have helped Frost and Pegg stuff Mel Brooks back into their Han Solo Underoos.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 50 Robert Wilonsky
    The Ice Harvest
    It's a dark lark, no more and no less, a caper comedy full of enough kinky jokes to remind the audience that, indeed, you're supposed to laugh at it every now and again.
    • 30 Metascore
    • 50 Robert Wilonsky
    The Pacifier
    Here's a bizarre hodgepodge of influences: "Kindergarten Cop" meets "Sound of Music," filtered through the Hulk Hogan movie "Mr. Nanny." The formula, by now so overused it's actually formless, is pure Disney
    • 30 Metascore
    • 40 Robert Wilonsky
    The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
    Moore invested his characters with flaws, with a tangible humanity; God knows they never felt the need to explain themselves, as the film does, rendering it something akin to one long footnote.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 60 Robert Wilonsky
    Meet the Fockers
    It's left to Barbra Streisand and Dustin Hoffman as Greg's parents to warm up the picture, and they light it on fire. Indeed, they're having such a swell time as Roz and Bernie Focker that they seem to be in an entirely different movie--a funnier one, a sexier one and a smarter one.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 40 Robert Wilonsky
    The Hard Word
    The screenplay does enough sabotage on its own; the nose, perhaps, is there to give us something to focus on lest our minds wander and wonder just how we chose to kill an hour and 48 minutes giving this crime caper access to our pocketbooks. (Might be good on video, though. Or cable.)
    • 57 Metascore
    • 50 Robert Wilonsky
    Osmosis Jones
    That Osmosis Jones plays like a sloppy hodgepodge is no surprise: The live-action scenes were done by the Farrellys, the animation by Sito and Kroon (whose names sounds like bodily functions), and the script was penned by another first-timer, Marc Hyman. Nobody seems to be on the same page.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 50 Robert Wilonsky
    Match Point
    Match Point may well be a return to form but only for those who love "September" and "Interiors," movies populated by Bergman evacuees too inert and dreary to even crack a smile.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 50 Robert Wilonsky
    Ray
    Were it not for the performance of Foxx, the movie, which touches every base and slows to a crawl near home plate, would sink even when the score soars.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 40 Robert Wilonsky
    Open Range
    Where "Silverado" swaggered, Open Range sulks; it's no fun at all.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 50 Robert Wilonsky
    Asylum
    The best you can say of Asylum is that it plays like a topless "Twilight Zone."
    • 36 Metascore
    • 40 Robert Wilonsky
    Biker Boyz
    There's no kick to its bag of tricks...It's a mild one among biker pics, a tricycle only pretending to be a Hog.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 40 Robert Wilonsky
    Shark Tale
    It's stunning, really, to consider how much time and expense went into something so chintzy and dull--a script full of non sequiturs shouted by a screen full of chum.
    • 39 Metascore
    • 60 Robert Wilonsky
    Daddy Day Care
    Murphy inhabited Jif like a sweet, innocent child, almost as though he were delighted to shed the cynicism and get down to the sweet, chewy center. Or day-care center, in this case.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 40 Robert Wilonsky
    The Passion of the Christ
    It's too turgid to awe the nonbelievers, too zealous to inspire and often too silly to take seriously, with its demonic hallucinations that look like escapees from a David Lynch film; I swear I couldn't find the devil carrying around a hairy-backed midget anywhere in the text I read.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 50 Robert Wilonsky
    Frailty
    Like so many other allegedly scary movies, it gets so tangled up in The Twist that it chokes the energy right out of the very audience it seeks to frighten.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 50 Robert Wilonsky
    Happy Endings
    As Frank, a widower who falls for his son's conniving would-be girlfriend (Maggie Gyllenhaal), Arnold is a revelation.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 50 Robert Wilonsky
    A Good Woman
    The real fault with this movie lies less with the clunky screenplay from Himelstein than with the acting, of which there is very little of note.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 50 Robert Wilonsky
    My Date with Drew
    Uou may choose to read My Date with Drew several different ways -- as endearing or frightening, as bleak or expectant, as the optimistic daydream of the naïve Everyman or the beginning of a problem that could only lead to a restraining order.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 60 Robert Wilonsky
    Ask the Dust
    Farrell's performance possesses a touch too many mannerisms on loan from Tyrone Power and Clark Gable; you can almost hear the gears turning in his brain each time he cocks his head or raises an eyebrow in homage.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 40 Robert Wilonsky
    Magnolia
    A brilliant piece of garbage -- mesmerizing, but only because you can't believe someone has the temerity to put so much into so little.
    • 33 Metascore
    • 40 Robert Wilonsky
    Uptown Girls
    Seems far too familiar for comfort. "About a Boy," anyone?
    • 38 Metascore
    • 40 Robert Wilonsky
    Raising Helen
    Sitting through Raising Helen is an exercise in frustration, because somewhere inside this big heap of Hollywood nothing is a something (someone, actually) worth saving and savoring. Her name is Joan Cusack.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 60 Robert Wilonsky
    De-Lovely
    Ultimately, it's the songs that energize this highlight, and lowlight, reel; you may forget the movie when you walk out of the theater, but you will do so while humming the soundtrack.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 50 Robert Wilonsky
    The Count of Monte Cristo
    In the end, it's a film so short on style and verve it feels lifeless; audiences might feel imprisoned in the Château d'If, praying for escape or quick death. Thankfully, one need not tunnel out of a movie theater.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 40 Robert Wilonsky
    Return to Never Land
    Little more than direct-to-vid nonsense offered by Disney at dollars on the penny to parents looking to waste time and money keeping kids occupied away from the TV screen.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 40 Robert Wilonsky
    Shrek
    Shrek isn't clever or smart. It just wants you to think it is, through wink after wink after wink.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 40 Robert Wilonsky
    The Santa Clause 2
    Once more, Tim Allen drops a lump of coal down the chimney.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 40 Robert Wilonsky
    The In-Laws
    It winds up like all Hollywood comedies these days--merely resembling something funny.
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