Empire by Dan Jolin

About as good as a big, stupid American action movie can be without ever being anything better than a big, stupid American action movie.

Entertainment Weekly by Lisa Schwarzbaum

This insanely busy, exceedingly long, and sometimes endearingly preposterous rendering has simply gotten the directions reversed in its insistence on sticking only to where men-who-make-adventure-flicks have gone before.

Miami Herald by René Rodríguez

It's not that Sahara is offensively bad: It's just that the picture, loud and busy as it is, never really finds its own identity.

Charlotte Observer by Lawrence Toppman

The movie, first preposterously entertaining and then just preposterous, makes James Bond films look as logical as Euclidean geometry.

ReelViews by James Berardinelli

Takes the action/adventure story to new heights of preposterousness. In a way, that's not a bad thing, since it allows a certain level of guilty enjoyment.

Variety by Robert Koehler

Saddled with more industry/celebrity baggage than a high-class safari voyage, Sahara is a rousing and only occasionally ridiculous adventure yarn.

L.A. Weekly by Chuck Wilson

This perfectly distracting, ultimately unsatisfying film feels like a James Bond flick in which the stand-in got the lead.

The A.V. Club by Keith Phipps

McConaughey is usually a welcome presence, but here, he looks like making the movie was getting in the way of his exciting African adventure.

The Hollywood Reporter by Kirk Honeycutt

Any movie starring Penelope Cruz or William H. Macy can't be all bad. And Sahara, which stars both Penelope Cruz and William H. Macy, proves the point: It isn't all bad.

Dallas Observer by Robert Wilonsky

A stunning piece of work--stunningly inept, stunningly incoherent, stunningly awful in every single way imaginable.