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.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 90 Robert Wilonsky
    Moneyball
    It really happened, it's really corny, and it's really great.
    • 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
    • 52 Metascore
    • 10 Robert Wilonsky
    Rat Race
    There's nothing more enervating than a stupid film with only random, and perhaps accidental, flashes of smarts; the rare prescient moments only serve to highlight how banal and vacant the rest of the movie is, especially when it stoops to conquer the gross-out market bled dry by the Farrelly Brothers and their myriad acolytes.
    • 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.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 100 Robert Wilonsky
    Down from the Mountain
    It's the most uplifting movie of a numbing year -- a feel-good film full of songs about feeling god-awful.
    • 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.)
    • 69 Metascore
    • 100 Robert Wilonsky
    Cinderella Man
    At last, his (Howard's) first great (and filling) movie--inspirational, yes, but far from hokey; moving, absolutely, but never saccharine; and gripping, despite its being a fixed fight.
    • 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.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 100 Robert Wilonsky
    Road to Perdition
    This movie would be worth feting in any season. It's wrenching but never manipulative, stoic but never dull, exhausting but never wearying.
    • New Times (L.A.)
    • 22 Metascore
    • 20 Robert Wilonsky
    Merci Docteur Rey
    Andrew Litvack, whose inability to direct is outweighed only by his inability to write anything remotely witty, enlightening, or engaging. Calling this a farce would be, well, a farce.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 70 Robert Wilonsky
    Robots
    Robots doesn't rely on being current, which will ultimately render it as timeless as any great fable. At its center is a big, beating heart.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Robert Wilonsky
    Elf
    Elf may be no more than a pleasant, amusing trifle, a grin that fades well before Thanksgiving, but it also will endure in the way all decent Hollywood-made Christmas fairy tales last if they're rendered with good cheer and good will.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 10 Robert Wilonsky
    National Treasure
    Isn't any fun at all, which is ultimately the most damning thing you can say about a Bruckheimer movie.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 90 Robert Wilonsky
    A Beautiful Mind
    It's everything most movies this year have not been: deeply felt, genuine, gracious.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 30 Robert Wilonsky
    Legally Blonde 2: Red, White & Blonde
    No one is more blameworthy than Witherspoon...With her newfound clout and charm, she could make better films; instead, she strolls up to the audience standing in line at the ATM and demands we fork it over or else.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 100 Robert Wilonsky
    Spider-Man 2
    Where Peter was yee-ha giddy with the discovery of his newfound powers in the first film, he's crushed by the weight of responsibility that comes with them in its far superior successor.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 70 Robert Wilonsky
    It's All Gone Pete Tong
    This is phony, absolutely, but the good feeling it leaves behind is plenty real.
    • 24 Metascore
    • 10 Robert Wilonsky
    The Suburbans
    So utterly awful, you're tempted to build a time machine, then go back in history and try to make sure Ward's parents never meet.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 70 Robert Wilonsky
    Late Marriage
    A remarkable movie with an unsatisfying ending, which is just the point.
    • New Times (L.A.)
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Robert Wilonsky
    Nine Queens
    Here it is -- another double cross for which you will, and should, hand over your few grubby bucks.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 70 Robert Wilonsky
    Matchstick Men
    That's where the movie falters: It tries to give Garcia's book a heart and conscience it didn't need and never demanded.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 20 Robert Wilonsky
    Shaft
    Singleton's version is cynical and silly--one long set-up to a closing scene that promises, or threatens, a sequel.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 90 Robert Wilonsky
    The 40 Year Old Virgin
    Virgin is astoundingly astute but also wondrously clever, written with more care and joy than any hundred comedies to come out of Hollywood in years.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 20 Robert Wilonsky
    Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back
    Who wants to pay to see a movie so bad the actors and writer-director feel the need to keep reminding us of how bad it is?
    • 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.
    • 35 Metascore
    • 10 Robert Wilonsky
    Event Horizon
    It's too bad, then, that Anderson (whose only other major credit is "Mortal Kombat," but of course) and first-time screenwriter Philip Eisner felt so compelled to do away with suspense and turn Event Horizon into a big-budget slasher film.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 80 Robert Wilonsky
    Occupation: Dreamland
    Scott and Olds' is an essential movie, and one of the year's very best.
    • 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.
    • 34 Metascore
    • 30 Robert Wilonsky
    Mission to Mars
    One can only assume all the, ah, good stuff landed on the cutting-room floor, because it sure as hell didn't make it to Mars.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 70 Robert Wilonsky
    The Dancer Upstairs
    The Dancer Upstairs would have made a suitable double feature with "The Quiet American"; both films unfold slowly, build toward an anxious climax and end with a shrug of grief.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 100 Robert Wilonsky
    Mystic River
    The performances are uniformly remarkable.
    • 27 Metascore
    • 70 Robert Wilonsky
    Did You Hear About the Morgans?
    It's a thoroughly delightful throwaway--the kind of movie for which cable television was made, from the maker of "Music & Lyrics" (Marc Lawrence), who knows his way 'round a snappy tune.
    • 38 Metascore
    • 0 Robert Wilonsky
    Little Nicky
    Little Nicky will redefine the phrase "worst movie ever," because it might actually be the worst movie ever.
    • 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.
    • 29 Metascore
    • 10 Robert Wilonsky
    Johnson Family Vacation
    The entire enterprise was directed by first-timer Christopher Erskin like a would-be Max Bialystock; one can only assume it's supposed to be this bad, because nobody sucks this hard on accident.
    • 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.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Robert Wilonsky
    The Aristocrats
    A celebration of the naughty joke and the courage it takes to tell one.
    • 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.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 10 Robert Wilonsky
    Along Came a Spider
    Deadly dull thriller.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Robert Wilonsky
    Shrek 2
    This Shrek is both funnier and warmer than its predecessor; it's better-looking, too, no longer as clunky and junky as video-game graphics.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 70 Robert Wilonsky
    Planet of the Apes
    Perfectly acceptable, deliriously charming...a goofy Bmovie dolled up like a square-jawed A-list blockbuster.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 30 Robert Wilonsky
    Sweet Home Alabama
    Which leaves Witherspoon, that delicious pastry, to heave the movie on her small shoulders and carry it home. The load is light -- the movie weighs no more than a glass of flat champagne -- but even she can't withstand the burden.
    • New Times (L.A.)
    • 61 Metascore
    • 70 Robert Wilonsky
    The Weather Man
    The Weather Man is not the wacky movie Paramount is selling, nor is it cynical Oscar bait. It's just a little movie about little people trying not to get wet or freeze to death or get burned when they walk outside, and good luck with all that.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Robert Wilonsky
    Baadasssss!
    As frantic and frenzied as its source material.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Robert Wilonsky
    War of the Worlds
    The filmmaker who once aimed to enchant his audiences with cheerful stories of beatific visitors from outer space now wants only to scare the hell out of us. E.T., as it turns out, is a mass murderer after all, and we are his Reese's Pieces.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 80 Robert Wilonsky
    The Truth About Charlie
    Charlie doesn't have a point, doesn't give a damn about giving a damn. It is what it is: a beautiful goof, a drunken supermodel in search of one more party before the sun comes up.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 70 Robert Wilonsky
    My Architect
    Nathaniel will sometimes take it too far. It's particularly distracting, and even a little distancing, when he waits till the end of a lengthy interview to tell one of his father's former collaborators and friends that he is Louis' son.
    • 34 Metascore
    • 20 Robert Wilonsky
    On the Line
    This pallid little ditty, like the rest of Lance Bass and pals' oeuvre, is soulless, banal and derivative.
    • 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.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 20 Robert Wilonsky
    Dickie Roberts: Former Child Star
    When the movie's not playing stupid, it's aiming for sickly sweet sincerity. It's such a jarring and inevitably juvenile juxtaposition it comes off like a Hallmark card parody written by the staffers at "Cracked."
    • 29 Metascore
    • 0 Robert Wilonsky
    How High
    Just when it looked like "Not Another Teen Movie" might claim the crap crown comes this stoner's tale.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 90 Robert Wilonsky
    Full Frontal
    That's all Full Frontal is: a brilliant gag at the expense of those who paid for it and those who pay to see it.
    • New Times (L.A.)
    • 57 Metascore
    • 80 Robert Wilonsky
    Madagascar
    It's bright and spry, giggly and bouncy, but also cuddly with occasional touches of cruelty--a movie in which best friends, when let loose in the wild, suddenly realize one's a little higher on the food chain.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 80 Robert Wilonsky
    Life and Debt
    Hard to watch, harder still to ignore.
    • 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.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 20 Robert Wilonsky
    America's Sweethearts
    Obnoxious, transparent cornball comedy.
    • 35 Metascore
    • 30 Robert Wilonsky
    Gone in Sixty Seconds
    It's barely a movie at all, more like a thousand car commercials spliced together in an hour.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 80 Robert Wilonsky
    Love Liza
    Provides Hoffman with what he's long deserved: a movie of his own.
    • 37 Metascore
    • 20 Robert Wilonsky
    Cold Creek Manor
    Deafeningly dull movie.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 90 Robert Wilonsky
    Metallica: Some Kind of Monster
    That he (Hetfield), and his band, still lives is astonishing enough; that you get to see how and why in a movie so painfully intimate is nothing short of extraordinary.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 0 Robert Wilonsky
    Martin Lawrence Live: Runteldat
    Not strong enough to stomach this leather-clad jerk-off session, which Miramax dumped onto Paramount in a rare case of common sense.
    • New Times (L.A.)
    • 48 Metascore
    • 30 Robert Wilonsky
    Final
    Final is one big hunh? barely worth the effort; just because it doesn't make any sense doesn't mean it's art.
    • 35 Metascore
    • 10 Robert Wilonsky
    Rumor Has It...
    Stay away: Everything about the movie is rinky-dink, from its phony, lifeless dialogue to its drab, shabby sitcom look to its choppy editing, all of which can wear on you after 95 minutes that come to feel like an eternity.
    • 33 Metascore
    • 40 Robert Wilonsky
    Uptown Girls
    Seems far too familiar for comfort. "About a Boy," anyone?
    • 66 Metascore
    • 90 Robert Wilonsky
    Crash
    What makes Crash so gripping--so terrifying in spots, so moving in others, and even a little funny at times--is how nothing happens as we think it will.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Robert Wilonsky
    Igby Goes Down
    Steers' film will likely polarize the audience, which, if nothing else, gives it rare resonance; at least it makes you feel, where many similar indie efforts make you sleepy.
    • New Times (L.A.)
    • 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.
    • 32 Metascore
    • 0 Robert Wilonsky
    Not Another Teen Movie
    It took five men to concoct the hackneyed plot and conceive the brainless jokes that constitute Not Another Teen Movie, meaning there are five men in Los Angeles right now still trying to wash that stink off their soft, idle hands.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 70 Robert Wilonsky
    The Ladykillers
    The Ladykillers fits snugly among the Coens' lighter and breezier movies--the ones you forget after you see them once and begin to appreciate and finally adore the more often you revisit them.
    • 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.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 70 Robert Wilonsky
    Go for Zucker
    Zucker!'s a bona fide hit in Germany, where, apparently, there's been a shortage of Jewish comedies since, oh, 1939, give or take. But it deserves its imported rep; rare's the movie that has an Orthodox Jew tripping on Ecstasy while getting a massage from a Palestinian prostitute hours before his mamala's funeral.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 30 Robert Wilonsky
    Herbie Fully Loaded
    To damn Herbie: Fully Loaded as soporific crap, as lazy profiteering, as yet another needless and cynical remake in a season populated by such con artists, would be as pointless as the movie itself.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 80 Robert Wilonsky
    Bandits
    Delightful almost in spite of itself.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 80 Robert Wilonsky
    The Upside of Anger
    If Allen owns The Upside of Anger, she is generous enough to loan it to Costner, who, despite the dim, glazed eyes, is more alive here than he's been in years.
    • 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.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Robert Wilonsky
    In the Bedroom
    If Dubus' work always resembled some sort of literary therapy session, as has often been said, then Field's version requires grief counseling. It is, at times, that devastating.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Robert Wilonsky
    The Aviator
    A fun and loving biopic
    • 16 Metascore
    • 10 Robert Wilonsky
    The Learning Curve
    The movie's all flash and formula, as original as the letter A, especially when it collapses in a dung heap of gunfire and corpses.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 70 Robert Wilonsky
    The Royal Tenenbaums
    One expects more from writer-director Wes Anderson (and his co-scribbler, Owen Wilson) than such frivolous fun that bears no lingering effect.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 90 Robert Wilonsky
    Murderball
    One of the most remarkable things about Murderball, which is easily among the year's best movies, is how little of its time is filled with the playing of the game.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 20 Robert Wilonsky
    Love & Basketball
    A film built upon transitions so weak and obvious it's astonishing the entire thing doesn't collapse on itself.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 90 Robert Wilonsky
    Scott Pilgrim vs. the World
    As he did in "Shaun of the Dead" and "Hot Fuzz", Wright immerses his heroes in pop culture's detritus and diversions, but doesn't drown them in it. You don't have to be dazzled or tickled by the movie, or get every joke, to be touched by it, too.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 30 Robert Wilonsky
    I Heart Huckabees
    Russell, a former student of Buddhist monk-philosopher Robert Thurman's, is reaching too far, straining too hard, saying too much that adds up to so little after all the mumbos and jumbos tallied up by film's end.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 60 Robert Wilonsky
    Phone Booth
    The movie's so hung up (pardon) on its gimmick it never transcends it; might have been better had Kiefer called Moviefone.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 40 Robert Wilonsky
    Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest
    Whatever goodwill one harbored toward the first Pirates film is quickly dashed by its sneering successor, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, which is less a film than a two-and-a-half-hour trailer for the final installment in this accidental trilogy.
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