The Longest Yard
Paramount Pictures | Release Date: May 27, 2005 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
48
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 35 Critic Reviews
Positive:
10
Mixed:
19
Negative:
6
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
80
VarietyJoe Leydon
Sandler impressively assumes the Reynolds role here, with strong support by Reynolds himself and a slightly restrained but frequently hilarious Chris Rock. Read full review
75
USA TodayMike Clark
The new version has the zip of a 96-yard punt return and all the ingredients to inspire the celebratory crushing of empty beer cans. Read full review
75
Rolling StonePeter Travers
What links the two films in fun and ferocity is the big game, a ripsnorter that is irresistibly entertaining. Read full review
75
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger Ebert
The Longest Yard more or less achieves what most of the people attending it will expect. Most of its audiences will be satisfied enough when they leave the theater, although few will feel compelled to rent it on video to share with their friends. So, yes, it's a fair example of what it is. Read full review
75
Charlotte ObserverLawrence Toppman
Its crass good humor makes it an enjoyable, reasonably faithful but over-the-top successor to the original. Read full review
70
The Hollywood ReporterMichael Rechtshaffen
This agreeable remake still manages to go the distance. Read full review
67
Seattle Post-IntelligencerWilliam Arnold
Sandler's frequent director, Peter Segal, also rises to the occasion, giving the proceedings some of the rough-hewn, hard-edged look of the original, and brings it to a funny, satisfying climax that -- happily -- doesn't cop out. Read full review
67
Portland OregonianM. E. Russell
It's a definite crowd-pleaser and a perfectly fun night at the movies. Read full review
63
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Liam Lacey
Though Sandler's resemblance to a pro athlete is indiscernible, his mockery of authority and his penchant for buffoonery and slapstick violence make him more of an heir to Reynolds than might be expected. Read full review
63
Miami HeraldConnie Ogle
Whether you'll enjoy this loud and rowdy remake of a 1974 Burt Reynolds film depends on your tolerance for three things: football, Adam Sandler and unabashed product placement. Read full review
60
Wall Street JournalJoe Morgenstern
That's what is missing from The Longest Yard most egregiously. Charm has been kept on the bench.
60
Chicago ReaderJ.R. Jones
The new jokes all seem like discards from a Rob Schneider comedy, but for the most part director Peter Segal (Anger Management) and screenwriter Sheldon Turner play a good defensive game, sticking close to the original film's story. Read full review
60
Washington PostMichael O'Sullivan
The pleasure is entirely like eating cake made from cake mix. It's not like you don't know how it's going to turn out, or how it tasted the last time you ate it. Read full review
58
Entertainment WeeklyLisa Schwarzbaum
Each joke and one-liner is a made-for-HBO zinger, each scene with Sandler a reaffirmation of the old friendship between the two successful SNL alums. Read full review
50
Los Angeles TimesCarina Chocano
If you're thinking of seeing it, and you're old enough to drive (or even read this), do yourself a favor and rent the original instead. Read full review
50
New York Daily NewsJami Bernard
It's a misguided, miscast remake of the 1974 Robert Aldrich classic. Read full review
50
Baltimore SunMichael Sragow
The lack of condescension is the movie's saving grace, if grace is the right word. There's no snobbery to the low-blow humor, or to Reynolds' low-key, genial comeback turn, or to Sandler's more-ingratiating-than-athletic lead performance. Read full review
50
Boston GlobeWesley Morris
Everyone in this overstaffed showbiz sampler has been better somewhere else. An assortment of talented comedians, character actors, professional athletes, sports commentators, one rapper, and two former sitcom stars sit in this movie like too much food on a buffet cart. Read full review
50
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalle
No classic, but neither was the original starring Burt Reynolds. Instead, it's an odd mix of amusing nonsense and nastiness that chugs along, hit and miss, until the last section, which is the best part of the movie and its real reason for being: the game. Read full review
50
SalonAndrew O'Hehir
Setting such larger aesthetic questions aside, there isn't much to dislike about The Longest Yard, at least once you've gotten used to the pervasive fear of homosexuality that seems to ooze from the film's pores. Read full review
50
Village VoiceEd Halter
Future analysts of American culture...will no doubt ponder why an incarceration-crazy society ends up rooting for the objects of its own control anxiety as comedic underdogs. Read full review
50
Austin ChronicleMarc Savlov
Consistently entertaining, athletically brutal, and, more often than not, well-acted. Read full review
50
The A.V. ClubNathan Rabin
The 2005 version refashions the material into a dual vehicle for Chris Rock and Adam Sandler, "Saturday Night Live" alums who specialize in lazy, ramshackle comedies that are just okay enough to not completely suck. Read full review
50
Dallas ObserverRobert Wilonsky
It strains to be funny where the original's gags were efficiently deadpan, yet it's also so unbearably lazy, stooping to cliché and caricature when it backs itself into the shower. Read full review
50
L.A. WeeklyKim Morgan
Peter Segal's film, a predictable, choppy affair at best, boasts an understated, likable performance by Sandler, but here we never feel, as we did with the original, invested in the outcome of the final game, or convinced of the redeemability of the movie's sordid protagonist. Read full review
50
Philadelphia InquirerCarrie Rickey
What makes the new movie almost bearable is the byplay between Sandler and Chris Rock. Read full review
40
TV Guide MagazineMaitland McDonagh
Sandler's performance is aimed squarely at the fans who love his smarty-pants man-boy shtick and Rock gets off some funny lines, but overall this is one dreary, formulaic slog through sports-movie cliches. Read full review
40
Film ThreatPete Vonder Haar
The Longest Yard lives or dies with its physical humor, a form of recent comedy I like to call slapstick sadism. Read full review
40
EmpireIan Nathan
It's less a film than a series of skits exhumed from the Reynolds original. Read full review
38
New York PostKyle Smith
"The Waterboy" was funny because Sandler doesn't look like a football player. When he swaggers around The Longest Yard starting fights and taking beatings without flinching, he only reminds us how little Steve McQueen and how much Woody Allen there is in him. Read full review
30
Washington PostAnn Hornaday
Whether it's the sight of Reynolds squeezed painfully into a football uniform or the endless footballs-to-the-crotch and tired gay jokes, The Longest Yard has the feeling of mutton dressed as lamb. Read full review
30
The New York TimesManohla Dargis
Softer, louder and cleaner than the 1974 version, the new film sentimentalizes the prisoners and the game, filing down their sharpest edges so that winning becomes a matter of triumph rather than resistance. Read full review
25
Chicago TribuneKevin Williams
Where the original was a serious film with funny moments, this movie isn't sure if it's a drama or comedy, too incompetently rendered to be both. What it accomplishes instead is to be nothing at all. An excessive, stupid, empty-headed nothing. Read full review
25
Christian Science MonitorDavid Sterritt
The result is a quickly paced, slickly filmed entertainment that's also as crude and rude as the PG-13 rating will allow. It's mighty mean-spirited too, aiming "satirical jibes" at everyone from black illiterates to white rednecks, from breakers of the law to enforcers of the law, from society's elites to society's dregs. Read full review
20
SlateDavid Edelstein
What was already a raucous put-on, a goof on Aldrich's brutal action movies, is now a hyperbolic, gross-out cartoon, with a cast of enormous ex-football stars (plus the 7-foot-2-inch Indian wrestler Dalip Singh) only adding to the air of facetiousness. Read full review
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