Cowboys & Aliens
Universal Pictures | Release Date: July 29, 2011 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
50
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 41 Critic Reviews
Positive:
16
Mixed:
20
Negative:
5
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
83
Tampa Bay TimesSteve PersallJul 28, 2011
This movie, saddle sores and all, is a lot of fun. Read full review
80
EmpireDan JolinAug 1, 2011
A simple entertainment in a summer of overcomplicated disappointments. Also much harder-edged than you may have expected. Read full review
80
The Hollywood ReporterKirk HoneycuttJul 24, 2011
The key to its success lies in the determination by everyone involved to play the damn thing straight. Even the slightest goofiness, the tiniest touch of camp, and the whole thing would blow sky high. But it doesn't. Read full review
80
VarietyPeter DebrugeJul 24, 2011
While Cowboys & Aliens offers little in the way of sociological insight (except perhaps giving the white man a taste of his own resource-stealing medicine), it's still a ripping good ride. Read full review
75
New York PostLou LumenickJul 29, 2011
This midsummer crowd-pleaser from the ateliers of Steven Spielberg and Ron Howard is still a great deal more rip-roaring fun than, say, the campy movie version of "The Wild Wild West." Read full review
75
Portland OregonianM. E. RussellJul 28, 2011
The movie is plainly entertaining, with a terrific cast and a fast-moving story helping you overlook the dialogue's frequent failure to crackle. Read full review
75
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleJul 28, 2011
Take a cowboy movie, add space aliens. That's a gimmick that could easily have exhausted itself after 20 minutes, but director Favreau, a team of screenwriters and some well-cast actors keep it alive, and the result is a crowd-pleasing summer movie with more wit than most. Read full review
75
ReelViewsJames BerardinelliJul 28, 2011
Director Jon Favreau keeps the tone light but, aside from the occasional low-key gag or one-liner, the humor is never allowed to upstage the more serious elements. Read full review
75
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsJul 28, 2011
The component genre parts coexist, excitingly, without veering into camp or facetious desperation. Alien-invasion aficionados should be pleased. Western nostalgists may be pleasantly surprised. Fans of cowboys-versus-aliens movies, well, it's been a long wait and here's your movie. Read full review
75
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger EbertJul 27, 2011
Cowboys & Aliens has without any doubt the most cockamamie plot I've witnessed in many a moon. Read full review
75
Boston GlobeTy BurrJul 27, 2011
A hell-for-leather action film with a healthy serving of scares. It really is "Aliens" on the open plains, "Independence Day" for the nation's centennial, and what the movie lacks in originality and stick-to-your-ribs Western authenticity, it makes up for in pell-mell multiplex entertainment. Read full review
70
Arizona RepublicBill GoodykoontzJul 27, 2011
Exactly what it sounds like: a cowboy movie and an alien movie thrown together, a genre mash-up that's more fun than good, but pretty good nonetheless. Read full review
63
New Orleans Times-PicayuneMike ScottJul 29, 2011
A film that is neither great nor horrible. Favreau does enough things right in Cowboys & Aliens to churn out a mostly enjoyable bit of mindless summertime action, just not enough to come close to rivaling his 2008 crowd-pleaser "Iron Man." Read full review
63
Washington PostAnn HornadayJul 28, 2011
A loving throwback to the classic westerns and sci-fi adventures of yore, this celebration of two of cinema's most revered genres doesn't stint in lavishing their most cherished conventions with even-handed affection and respect. Read full review
63
Philadelphia InquirerSteven ReaJul 28, 2011
Neither fish nor fowl (nor extraterrestrial), and that's a problem. Craig, handsomely craggy, plays it straight, and like Eastwood's Man With No Name, he doesn't have much to say. Read full review
63
Orlando SentinelRoger MooreJul 27, 2011
That it lacks the snap, crackle and kapow of the summer's better comic book blockbusters isn't surprising. With all this effort riding on a big, expensive and rushed studio summer picture, the real miracle is that any of them come to life. Read full review
60
MovielineMichelle OrangeJul 27, 2011
Like the Inuit and their many words for "snow," Jake has a thousand squinty faces and they all mean "Bugger off." Read full review
60
Village VoiceNick PinkertonJul 26, 2011
Director Jon Favreau's experiment in genre crossbreeding - a Western-sci-fi mashup pumped full of inspirational all-in-this-together spirit - is a cute, crowd-pleasing idea, though more decadent than a revitalization of either genre. Read full review
58
Entertainment WeeklyOwen GleibermanJul 27, 2011
Cowboys & Aliens has fun moments, but it's a plodding entertainment because it mostly tastes like leftovers. Read full review
50
The New YorkerAnthony LaneJul 31, 2011
That is what kids will come away with, together with a dose of wishful thinking: the vague belief that, with good will and a foe from far away, all those feuding parties of the Wild West - the cowboys, the Indians, and the no-good rogues - could have settled their differences and got along just fine. Go tell it to Gary Cooper. Read full review
50
SlateJosh LevinJul 29, 2011
Instead of merging the Western and the sci-fi genre to form some new, transcendent class of popcorn fare, Cowboys & Aliens just regurgitates the conventions of both genres. Double the high concept, quadruple the clichés. Read full review
50
TimeRichard CorlissJul 28, 2011
Gradually, though, the movie sinks into ordinariness, serving up too many Spielbergian reaction shots of each cast member gawking or gulping at an alien encounter, and too many moral lessons that must be learned or taught. Read full review
50
Chicago ReaderBen SachsJul 28, 2011
Playing a variation on John Wayne's character from "Red River," Harrison Ford gives an understandably bewildered performance, often appearing uncertain if he should take his lines seriously. Read full review
50
Rolling StonePeter TraversJul 28, 2011
It looks slick, pricey and starry – Indiana Jones teams up with James Bond for a gunfight with space demons. But even Harrison Ford and Daniel Craig can't save a movie that's all concept, no content. Read full review
50
Austin ChronicleKimberley JonesJul 28, 2011
For better or worse (and I'd argue the latter), the aliens are as monolithically evil, unformed, and un-individuated as characters as Native Americans once were in the earliest of Westerns. Read full review
50
SalonAndrew O'HehirJul 28, 2011
The movie never makes much of a case for its own existence; it's a mediocre western clumsily welded to a mediocre alien shoot-'em-up, and if you allow yourself to think about its treatment of history for as long as one second, you'll feel insulted. Read full review
50
St. Louis Post-DispatchJoe HollemanJul 28, 2011
It would have been nice if Cowboys & Aliens had come come up with the right equation to balance originality and homage. But in the end, it all turned into trigonometry. Read full review
50
The A.V. ClubKeith PhippsJul 28, 2011
You want cowboys and aliens in the same movie? This one's for you. If you want anything beyond what the title promises, look elsewhere. And that means even anything resembling a clever mash-up of established genres.
50
USA TodayClaudia PuigJul 27, 2011
Dialogue is terse and predictable, and the sci-fi thriller portion is even less compelling than the Western saga. Read full review
50
ObserverRex ReedJul 27, 2011
Cowboys & Aliens is one of the silliest movies ever made, but so many otherwise serious people have attached their names to it that, as Arthur Miller wrote in Death of a Salesman, attention must be paid. Read full review
45
NPRIan BuckwalterJul 29, 2011
Based on a graphic novel, Cowboys & Aliens never quite transcends the flat dimensions of its source material. Read full review
40
New York Magazine (Vulture)David EdelsteinJul 31, 2011
An agreeable time-killer, but I'll bet a couple of clever kids could make a livelier movie with a Woody puppet and a Predator doll. Read full review
40
The New York TimesManohla DargisJul 28, 2011
Favreau wavers uncertainly between goofy pastiche and seriousness in a movie that wastes its title and misses the opportunity to play with, you know, ideas about the western and science-fiction horror. Read full review
40
New York Daily NewsJoe NeumaierJul 28, 2011
The sole treasure of Cowboys & Aliens is that director Jon Favreau ("Iron Man") has fashioned an actual rawhide ride from a graphic novel (that took six writers to wrangle to the screen). Read full review
40
Time OutKeith UhlichJul 27, 2011
Favreau's direction is so boulder-heavy-the action sequences, especially the climactic assault on the alien mothership, are an eye-and-ear-shattering mess-that the small moments of poetry...are lost amid too much digital sound and fury. Read full review
40
Boxoffice MagazineTodd GilchristJul 24, 2011
It's easy to like the cast - thanks as much to their previous work as anything on screen here - but with such a convoluted, illogical and dull story, no one fares particularly well. Read full review
38
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Rick GroenJul 28, 2011
Over on the aliens side, it's hard to make out faces, but there's no doubt about their place of origin: These slimy, growling, bug-eyed and distinctly non-scary things are straight from central casting. Read full review
30
Los Angeles TimesKenneth TuranJul 28, 2011
A leaden mash-up of western and science-fiction elements that ends up noisy, grotesque and unappealing. Read full review
30
Wall Street JournalJoe MorgensternJul 28, 2011
Cowboys versus aliens is a concept that may make you smile in anticipation, but wipe that smile off your face before buying your ticket. Read full review
25
Miami HeraldRene RodriguezJul 29, 2011
Every summer movie season usually has at least one spectacular, disastrous flame-out, and although the dog days of August still loom, I doubt there will come a big-budget blockbuster worse than Cowboys and Aliens. Read full review
25
Slant MagazineNick SchagerJul 26, 2011
Brandishing a literal-minded title as laughable as the rest of its action, Cowboys & Aliens mashes up genres with a staunch dedication to getting everything wrong, making sure that each scene is more inane than the one that preceded it. Read full review
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