The Family Reviews
Top CriticThis is a deliberately off-kilter, cheerfully violent, hit-and-miss effort with just enough moments of inspiration to warrant a recommendation.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
A movie with a PG brain and a NC-17 body count, unsuitable for audiences of any age.
A black comedy that doesn't begin to jell but has a sweetheart of a cast and the odd diverting moment.
The casting of Robert De Niro as an ex-Mafioso hiding in witness protection is witty in only the silliest, most superficial way. It's a joke with its own tinny, built-in laugh track.
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| Original Score: 1/4
The Family is a film at once strange and intriguing. It can't seem to settle on a tone.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
The film isn't worthy of De Niro's stature, in the gangster sub-genre or otherwise.
Full Review
| Original Score: C
A love letter to Scorsese constructed with all the grace of Mr. Bean.
Full Review
| Original Score: 5.1/10
If cultural treason were a capital offense, "The Family" director Luc Besson would be on death row.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
"The Family" does have its entertaining moments. But anyone who thinks it's a real knee-slapper needs therapy. Stat.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/5
It doesn't even try for basic credibility. But buoyed by hot performances, it sustains a zapping electrical energy.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
Curiously airless, weightless and tonally uncertain, Luc Besson's mafia comedy falls flat.
Besson's history is one of making crowd-pleasing entertainment and The Family is no different.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
Not known for subtlety, Besson gets the expected laughs, and then some.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
Remember when Robert De Niro was an interesting actor? These days his talent, like his character in "The Family," is in the witness protection program, never to be seen again.
Full Review
| Original Score: 1/5
The Blakes think they're vigilantes, but in most other movies they'd be the bad guys.
Full Review
| Original Score: 1/4
The thing that saves the movie time and again is Besson's uncanny ability to shift tone, sometimes even within a single sequence, from light comedy to serious action, to genuine emotion and even romance.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
[An] oddly paced, overly violent, sometimes amusing but sometimes jarringly unfunny movie.
No one's ever going to accuse Besson of having a light comic touch, but the mayhem in this minor mob comedy, more often than not, brings the laughs.
The Family is a comic soufflé that never rises.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
This unexciting, unfunny would-be action satire is filled with Italian-American stereotypes, decades-old TV-style Mafia cliches, bits of business that never amount to anything and actors so much better than the hoary, one-joke material.
Full Review
| Original Score: 1/5
The Family is a fish-out-of-water/buddy comedy/Mob flick. But most of all, it's a missed opportunity.
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| Original Score: 2/4
There are some great moments sprinkled throughout. But overall, these elements never seem to come together in the same harmonious way that this family does with each other.
While Besson knows his way around an action film, he's not as adept at comedy.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
The movie is a cartoon, but the stakes are surprisingly real.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
