King's Ransom is a wit-deficient barrage of obnoxious characters and second-hand punchlines.
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04/27/05
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King's Ransom (2005)
2
%
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:49
Fresh:1
Rotten:48
Average Rating:2.3/10
Consensus: Filled with crass dialogue, unlikable characters, and overdone slapstick gags, King's Ransom is an utterly inept would-be comedy.
Theatrical Release:Apr 22, 2005 Wide
Box Office: $3,998,889
Synopsis: Anthony Anderson sheds his usual sidekick status, heading up the ensemble cast as Malcolm King, a boorish, egomaniacal billionaire who owns a huge, equally tasteless marketing firm in Chicago. The... [More]
Starring: Anthony Anderson, Jay Mohr, Regina Hall, Loretta Devine
Director: Jeff Byrd
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Reviews for King's Ransom
Top CriticSpurn King's Ransom as you would spurn a rabid weasel.
04/27/05
Little in this film suggests 'director' Jeff Byrd and writer Wayne Conley possess any facility -- or familiarity -- with irony or any other comedic device.
04/26/05
Top CriticAchieves a rare form of badness.
04/26/05
The scenarios are halfway convincing and at times even passably clever; they are never, however, especially funny.
04/26/05
With the humor in this lazy farce about as subtle as a shotgun blast to the face, it's possible to see the whole movie as an accident, the cumulative result of haphazard negligence.
04/26/05
Top CriticIf you shelve out even $1 for this movie, you'll feel as though you've paid a "King's Ransom."
04/26/05
Doesn't pay off.
04/26/05
Somewhere in a pitch meeting someone must have piped up: 'I know. We'll have a guy named 'King' and he gets kidnapped, see? So there's a 'ransom'! King's Ransom, get it? After that, I've got nothing.'
04/26/05
Merely a collection of antics clothespinned to a plot.
04/26/05
Top CriticAfter a while, all these odious, yammering people start to sound a lot like Charlie Brown's teacher. And they somehow all end up together at a time and a place you do not want to be.
04/26/05
None of this is remotely funny, despite screenwriter Wayne Conley's resorting to virtually every known stereotype about African-Americans and more crass references to menstruation and prison sex than have ever appeared in a movie rated PG-13.
04/26/05
Top CriticThe Chronicle's Little Man was fighting an internal struggle to abandon his chair altogether, but was ultimately swayed to continue his nap, mostly by a few of the comics in supporting roles.
04/26/05
Devoid of anything resembling wit or even guiltily amusing tasteless gags, the film lurches from one haplessly staged sequence to another, with the performers vainly struggling to infuse humor into the proceedings.
04/26/05
One of those barbarically unfunny romps that would be over in less than 10 minutes if just one character had an IQ higher than a cherry Pop-Tart.
04/26/05
If Anderson can land the role of a corporate shark who's surrounded by hot babes, it's conceivable we could soon see Jennifer Lopez as the lead in 'Memoirs of a Geisha'...
04/25/05
The desperately unfunny kidnapping farce King's Ransom is the cinematic equivalent of trampled chewing gum on a subway platform.
04/25/05
Top CriticByrd haphazardly assembles a bunch of overly exaggerated caricatures and parades them around in a dissolving farce that has all the wayward charm of a botched lobotomy
04/23/05
The film's tag line - 'Big Man. Big Plan. Big Mistake.' sums up the decision to make the movie... big mistake.
04/23/05
Unobtrusive and virtually painless as an occasionally witty laugher, but lacks the courage of its convictions to follow through with its less commercial ambitions.
04/23/05
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