Erik Adams

Tomatometer-approved critic

Publications: AV Club

Movie Reviews Only

Movies
TV

	T-Meter	Title \| Year	Review
B	94%	Boys State (2020)	Boys State has noble aims when it comes to teaching teenagers how their leaders are chosen and held accountable, but Boys State shows that those aims can only do so much to keep the uglier side of that process at bay. - AV Club EDIT Read More \| Posted Aug 23, 2020
C+	94%	Beastie Boys Story (2020)	The Beastie Boys story is simply too big, too strange, too unwieldy for Beastie Boys Story to contain it. - AV Club EDIT Read More \| Posted Apr 26, 2020
A-	96%	John Mulaney & The Sack Lunch Bunch (2019)	While plugging into a potent strain of existential humor, The Sack Lunch Bunch remains earnest in its execution and reverent toward its inspirations. - AV Club EDIT Read More \| Posted Dec 26, 2019
	No Score Yet	Eugene Mirman: An Evening Of Comedy In A Fake Underground Laboratory (2012)	It's a little messy, but you were warned by that mouthful of a title. - AV Club EDIT Read More \| Posted Aug 7, 2019
	100%	Patton Oswalt: Finest Hour (2012)	If this is a softer [Patton] Oswalt, at least it's his own brand of softness. And it's still hilarious. - AV Club EDIT Read More \| Posted Aug 1, 2019
A-	100%	Aziz Ansari: Buried Alive (2013)	Buried Alive is a spectacularly entertaining hour-plus of stand-up, but it's also an intriguing bit of cultural anthropology. - AV Club EDIT Read More \| Posted Jul 17, 2019
B+	88%	Oh, Hello On Broadway (2017)	Its sense of humor is deeply specific and heavily referential... it's also proof that a specific perspective and an alienated audience don't necessarily go hand in hand. - AV Club EDIT Read More \| Posted Jul 15, 2019
A	100%	John Mulaney: The Comeback Kid (2015)	You can tell why two broadcast networks and no less an esteemed comedy maven as Lorne Michaels thought John Mulaney should be a TV star. The stand-up comedian is great on camera, as he repeatedly demonstrates in his new hour-long special. - AV Club EDIT Read More \| Posted Jul 9, 2019
B+	98%	Deadwood: The Movie (2019)	It's Malcomson who runs away with Deadwood: The Movie. - AV Club EDIT Read More \| Posted Jun 5, 2019
B-	100%	The Lonely Island Presents: The Unauthorized Bash Brothers Experience (2019)	The Unauthorized Bash Brothers Experience is joke-dense and visually rich, but comes up short on a key factor for making the Lonely Island big leagues: It doesn't invite the type of repeat viewing that built the cults of Hot Rod and Popstar. - AV Club EDIT Read More \| Posted May 24, 2019
	100%	John Mulaney: Kid Gorgeous at Radio City (2018)	What follows is a special that manages to find some intimacy within what was once the world's largest auditoriums, while never once losing sight that, holy shit, Mulaney's playing Radio City. - AV Club EDIT Read More \| Posted Dec 27, 2018
	82%	W. Kamau Bell: Private School Negro (2018)	A timely, energetic set that covers politics, racism, parenting, TV, and, in one of the stories he shares in Private School Negro, watching political TV coverage about a racist while parenting. - AV Club EDIT Read More \| Posted Dec 19, 2018
	56%	Nestor, the Long-Eared Christmas Donkey (1977)	This is the best way to tell the Christmas story in Animagic: with the proper amount of pathos and levity -- and fun character design, too. - AV Club EDIT Read More \| Posted Dec 5, 2018
	75%	The Little Drummer Boy (1968)	A poignant third act restores his faith in humanity, all the while making up for some of the roughest animation work in the Videocraft catalogue. - AV Club EDIT Read More \| Posted Dec 4, 2018
	50%	Rudolph's Shiny New Year (1976)	It all adds up to a largely nonsensical wintertime fairy tale, but with Rankin/Bass' seasonal powers in the process of diminishing, Rudolph's Shiny New Year represents a last-ditch effort to synthesize a number of imaginative concepts into a single story. - AV Club EDIT Read More \| Posted Nov 27, 2018
	90%	The Year Without a Santa Claus (1974)	[It] melds the big heart and "true Christmas spirit" of previous specials with the bonkers, hallucinatory imagery of those to come-leaving behind only the slightest hint of treacle. - AV Club EDIT Read More \| Posted Nov 19, 2018
C-	23%	The Happytime Murders (2018)	The knowing handling of noir conventions and clever metaphor for race relations of Brian Henson's R-rated fluff bath were all treated with greater grace and more panache 31 years ago in Who Framed Roger Rabbit. - AV Club EDIT Read More \| Posted Aug 23, 2018
B-	94%	Robin Williams: Come Inside My Mind (2018)	More than any cradle-to-grave narrative, these are the primary reasons to accept the documentary's titular summons: to witness Williams' artistry all over again, to see something unseen from a performer who was so ubiquitous and so prolific. - AV Club EDIT Read More \| Posted Jul 17, 2018
A	100%	Chris Gethard: Career Suicide (2017)	Career Suicide is suffused with that spirit, a display of Gethard's deft ability to balance confessional honesty with a keen nose for the absurd. - AV Club EDIT Read More \| Posted Jan 9, 2018
C	60%	Jim Henson's Turkey Hollow (2015)	A modern-day fairy tale starring fantastical creatures who communicate in Mad magazine sound effects ("Burble," "Zorp," "Squonk," and "Thwring") ought to feel a little more unconventional than Turkey Hollow. - AV Club EDIT Read More \| Posted Nov 20, 2015
B	89%	Love & Mercy (2015)	Love & Mercy is so emotionally acute, it doesn't matter if some of the words turn out all wrong. - AV Club EDIT Read More \| Posted Jun 4, 2015
B	89%	Elf: Buddy's Musical Christmas (2014)	Marrying that source material to the stop-motion components of the original Elf, Buddy's Musical Christmas won't supplant its big-screen inspiration-but it sure is a sight to behold. - AV Club EDIT Read More \| Posted Dec 16, 2014
B-	80%	Muppets Most Wanted (2014)	The Muppets are creatures of indulgence, and their sense of humor is one of excess. Muppets Most Wanted is a mess of a movie, but anything tidier would be a poor fit. - AV Club EDIT Read More \| Posted Mar 20, 2014
C	30%	Date And Switch (2014)	It's a movie about being true to yourself that's reluctant to let its real character show. At any point that it looks likely to tweak sex-comedy convention or get truly weird, it reverses course at the last minute. - AV Club EDIT Read More \| Posted Feb 13, 2014