Name : Jim Slotek / Alias : Toronto Sun
It's a movie that's half-over before it tells us what it's really about.

Name : Natalie Daher / Alias : Minneapolis Star Tribune
It fumbles a bit by prioritizing the goofy antics of its white cast over what turns out to be a smart depiction of non-Western life.

Name : Randy Cordova / Alias : Arizona Republic
There might be a decent movie in here somewhere, if the focus had been on the right character.

Name : Manohla Dargis / Alias : New York Times
Cliched, enervating, insulting - it's tough to settle on a single pejorative for "Rock the Kasbah," though abysmal might do.

Name : Joe Morgenstern / Alias : Wall Street Journal
"Rock the Kasbah" is the mausoleum where comedy was buried.

Name : Michael O'Sullivan / Alias : Washington Post
Levinson never seems to know what to point his camera at, or when to cut, and Glazer never seems to know when to leave a joke alone and let the cast work.

Name : Michael Phillips / Alias : Chicago Tribune
A white-savior showbiz fable of a particularly dubious and retrograde variety.

Name : Brian Truitt / Alias : USA Today
A lot of the actor's usual mercurial charm isn't used to full effect and is actually tempered when it doesn't feel like it should be.

Name : Peter Travers / Alias : Rolling Stone
Rock the Kasbah goes fierce to quietly touching and back to funny again.

Name : J. R. Jones / Alias : Chicago Reader
This dismal comedy, scripted by Murray's old pal Mitch Glazer (Scrooged), evinces only enough interest in Afghanis to keep the story rolling.

Name : David Lewis / Alias : San Francisco Chronicle
Murray does his best to hold up the movie, but there's only so much he can do. Ultimately, his latest fish out of water never makes it back upstream.

Name : Tasha Robinson / Alias : AV Club
A comedy that's openly afraid to seem too sincere or too mawkish, and doesn't fully commit either to its comedy or its uplift. Like Murray, it's wry and presented largely in air quotes, with an accompanying eye-roll.

Name : Todd McCarthy / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
Rock the Kasbah morphs into a pretty implausible feel-good movie that's nearly as maudlin as it is unconvincing.

Name : Mark Jenkins / Alias : NPR
Rock the Kasbah's timing is so slack, and its screenplay so shapeless, that the movie doesn't even rise to the level of an Afghan-war Stripes. It's almost as laugh-free as the latest news from Kunduz.

Name : Peter Howell / Alias : Toronto Star
Quite possibly [Murray's] worst movie ever.

Name : Leah Greenblatt / Alias : Entertainment Weekly
Your enjoyment of all this will probably depend heavily on your willingness to let the words romp and Taliban coexist for approximately two hours.

Name : Rafer Guzman / Alias : Newsday
An ongoing war is no setting for a musical comedy, especially one this glib and inane.

Name : Richard Roeper / Alias : Chicago Sun-Times
This movie is all over the place.

Name : Stephen Whitty / Alias : Newark Star-Ledger
It needs a smarter script. It needs at least two or three perfectly engineered, joke-after-joke sequences. It needs a smart director - did you really do "Wag the Dog," Levinson? - whose idea of political satire goes beyond freshman-year sarcasm.

Name : Gary Goldstein / Alias : Los Angeles Times
An acclaimed film director, a legendary comic actor, lots of fun rock and pop songs, and a noble story at its core can't save "Rock the Kasbah" from being one hugely misguided dud.

Name : Ty Burr / Alias : Boston Globe
If it were any worse, they'd be screening it as evidence at The Hague.

Name : Alonso Duralde / Alias : TheWrap
Bill Murray is Bill Murray is Bill Murray in a comedy that's little more than a schtick delivery system with some third-act personal growth thrown in for good measure.

Name : Joe Neumaier / Alias : TIME Magazine
Its music-industry gags sit awkwardly next to war-zone jokes and cultural quips, landing all involved on a peace train to nowhere.

Name : Alan Scherstuhl / Alias : Village Voice
For every moment of desert beauty, or insight into the twilight economies that flourish in a war zone, there's a key scene that appears truncated or even missing.

Name : Brad Wheeler / Alias : Globe and Mail
Not Murray's best and not Levinson's either.

Name : Andrew Barker / Alias : Variety
Bill Murray heads to Afghanistan in director Barry Levinson's dreadfully misguided farce.

Name : Lindsey Bahr / Alias : Associated Press
The movie wants to be both glib and emotionally resonant, but it can't seem to figure out what the stakes are - even as people are getting shot.

Name : David Edelstein / Alias : New York Magazine/Vulture
As one-liner after one-liner misses its mark, you begin to feel sorry for Murray, who's really too old to be playing a guy who has a little daughter . and likes to get kinky with Kate Hudson as a raucous, Dolly Parton-style hooker-businesswoman.

Name : Steven Rea / Alias : Philadelphia Inquirer
Some projects are just too misguided for the star to mug and shrug his way out of. Consider Rock the Kasbah at the top, or the bottom, of that list.

Name : Soren Anderson / Alias : Seattle Times
Murray, idiosyncratic as always, dominates, but his performance can't save this misconceived mess.

Name : Cary Darling / Alias : Fort Worth Star-Telegram/DFW.com
Rock the Kasbah, does not rock at all - not even a little bit.

Name : Trevor Johnston / Alias : Time Out
Old-fashioned storytelling values and zeitgeisty relevance make for a worthy addition to sub-aquatic cinema's nerve-juddering legacy.

Name : Guy Lodge / Alias : Variety
Despite rugged craft and a seaworthy ensemble, Kevin Macdonald's low-key submarine thriller never quite sparks to life.

Name : Claudia Puig / Alias : USA Today
While it's an energetic romp, there is more slapstick humor than wit at work here, and a good deal of borrowing from the far more clever Monsters, Inc.

Name : Bill Goodykoontz / Alias : Arizona Republic
There are a few laughs sprinkled throughout director Genndy Tartakovsky's film, but not nearly enough.

Name : Betsy Sharkey / Alias : Los Angeles Times
"Hotel Transylvania" never becomes the great monster mash that seemed in the offing.

Name : Amy Biancolli / Alias : San Francisco Chronicle
The film is good goofy fun, even as the plot uncorks a whole lotta nothing.

Name : Tom Russo / Alias : Boston Globe
Every generation of trick-or-treaters deserves its monster mash.

Name : Mary F. Pols / Alias : TIME Magazine
A family movie that includes almost entirely lewd jokes for adults.

Name : Tom Huddleston / Alias : Time Out
No one does saccharine like Adam Sandler. The man can be sharp, angry and funny - but when he lays on the sweetness, it's like drowning in an avalanche of Tate & Lyle.

Name : Steven Rea / Alias : Philadelphia Inquirer
There's enough here to entertain - and gross out - the kiddie crowd, and parental units, too.

Name : Tom Keogh / Alias : Seattle Times
There's much to enjoy here in a disposable way, particularly jokes about monsters having ordinary problems with kids and spouses.

Name : Peter Debruge / Alias : Variety
A stale overprotective-dad story set within a location that could easily house a more inspired mix of characters and events.

Name : Bruce Demara / Alias : Toronto Star
A fast, funny and wildly inventive animated tale with enough laughs and heart to appeal to audiences of all ages.

Name : Stephen Whitty / Alias : Newark Star-Ledger
Even the animation is ugly.

Name : Sara Stewart / Alias : New York Post
[Tartakovsky's] wit and attention to detail enliven a collection of well-known ghosts and ghouls.

Name : Michael O'Sullivan / Alias : Washington Post
"Hotel Transylvania" may offer a perfectly fine Halloween-themed getaway for young kids, but there aren't many amenities for Mom and Dad.

Name : Michael Rechtshaffen / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
A scarily unfunny animated monster movie that goes awry right off the bat.

Name : Laremy Legel / Alias : Film.com
The biggest issue facing "Hotel Transylvania" is that this story has been done before, over the past six decades, and in a far superior manner.

Name : James Berardinelli / Alias : ReelViews
Not since Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein have the great Universal monsters been subjected to such dismal treatment.

Name : Joe Neumaier / Alias : New York Daily News
There's enough silly slapstick here that it flies by harmlessly.

Name : Ian Buckwalter / Alias : NPR
At its core, this movie is little more than Twilight told from the other side of the tracks, only with far more fart jokes.

Name : Bilge Ebiri / Alias : New York Magazine/Vulture
It's all strictly one-note stuff. But it's a funny note, and the film has a grand old time giving us the same type of gag over and over again.

Name : Nick Pinkerton / Alias : Village Voice
Although it doesn't worry itself with dialectic complexities, Hotel Transylvania succeeds on the level of entertainment.

Name : Neil Genzlinger / Alias : New York Times
The movie loses its originality as it rolls toward its predictable conclusion, but it's still lovely to look at.

Name : Alonso Duralde / Alias : TheWrap
Hotel Transylvania may lack the emotional oomph of Pixar's best efforts, but it makes up for it with rapid-fire gags and an unflagging pace that makes this a rare all-ages treat.

Name : Glenn Kenny / Alias : MSN Movies
The main reason I'm giving this a more favorable rating than my actual opinion of the movie would seem to call for is because the screening I attended also had a lot of kids in the audience, and most of them were relatively delighted.

Name : Tasha Robinson / Alias : AV Club
A story about the difficult balance between protecting loved ones and controlling them is discarded so the cast can monomaniacally pursue a trite cliche summed up with a silly noise.

Name : Tom Long / Alias : Detroit News
It won't drive you crazy to watch it, but it isn't "The Lion King" either.

Name : Lisa Schwarzbaum / Alias : Entertainment Weekly
Tartakovsky's zippy, boing-boing touch shines through in the purely physical antics of the monster mob; words aren't necessary as the freaks bounce around the place with nutso energy.

Name : Rafer Guzman / Alias : Newsday
Feels like a string of jokes without a story.

Name : Liam Lacey / Alias : Globe and Mail
This comedy starring and produced by Adam Sandler feels as slapped together one of the comedian's live-action buddy movies.

Name : Nell Minow / Alias : Chicago Sun-Times
The 3-D adds a vertiginous thrill to a chase on flying tables and a touch of claustrophobia to a maze of underground corridors.

Name : David Fear / Alias : Time Out
Tweens might appreciate the sugar-rush ghoulishness; Famous Monsters of Filmland fans and discerning kids-flick viewers may find themselves reaching for torches.