Entertainment Weekly by Lisa Schwarzbaum

The intimate movie hums with a back-in-the-hood vibe that gets the two stars playing contentedly, and delightfully, for the love of local filmmaking.

Wall Street Journal by Joe Morgenstern

Mr. Cuarón directs with a hand that's as sure as it is deft. The music is terrific, though I can't say the same for the fusty subtitles, and Adam Kimmel's cinematography bathes the movie's cheerful absurdities in a beautiful glow.

Village Voice by J. Hoberman

Rudo y Cursi is as fatalistic as any film noir, but it's played for cartoonish screwball comedy. At once smooth and frantic, filled with cozy clutter and vulgar jive, the movie subsumes its moralizing in frat-house entertainment.

Newsweek by David Ansen

Hilarious, satirical and melancholy, Rudo y Cursi may not go as deep as "Y Tu Mamá También," but it has a similar vivacity. It turns this tale of brotherly bonds and sibling rivalry--a veiled allegory of the Cuarón boys themselves?--into one of the year's most memorable offerings.

Los Angeles Times by Robert Abele

Mexico has had its share of debilitating transnational news lately, but the arrival of the puckishly entertaining, fleet-of-foot drama-comedy Rudo y Cursi deserves a hearty welcome.

USA Today by Claudia Puig

Rudo y Cursi (which roughly translates to tough and corny) is more raucous and slight than the contemplative "Y Tu Mama," but it is an undeniably entertaining rags-to-riches-to-rags comedy.

Rolling Stone by Peter Travers

Luna and García Bernal display the kind of chemistry that makes you overlook the clichés in the script by first-time director Carlos Cuarón. Sometimes good-natured fun is enough.

The A.V. Club by Nathan Rabin

Carlos Cuaron's otherwise terrific new comedy Rudo Y Cursi barely survives its third-act "Goodfellas" descent into seedy coke-and-crime drama.

Chicago Sun-Times by Roger Ebert

This is not a deep movie, but it's a broad one. It reunites three talents who had an enormous hit with "Y Tu Mama Tambien": actors Gael Garcia Bernal and Diego Luna, and Carlos Cuaron, who wrote that film and writes and directs this one. Instead of trying to top themselves with life and poignancy, they wisely do something for fun.

Christian Science Monitor by Peter Rainer

The rags-to-riches-to-rags trajectory is shopworn, but the sibling rivalries are cantankerous and goofy and Bernal's Tato, who fancies himself a pop singing star, wouldn't make the first cut on "American Idol."

The Hollywood Reporter

Rudo y Cursi scores from every angle -- comic, personal and cross-cultural.

Film Threat

What Cuarón and friends have done is made a cute genre film. What's the harm in that? I’m sure Bernal will be back to his edgy roots soon enough.

The New York Times by A.O. Scott

While the film is lively and engaging, it also, in the end, feels a little thin, largely because it is unsure of how earnestly to treat its own lessons about fate, ambition and brotherly love.

Variety

Picture scores a solid goal for its national cinema and the cause of comedy.