Seattle Post-Intelligencer by William Arnold

The real joy here is the performance of Jean Dujardin, who, besides being very funny as the Gallic Maxwell Smart, is also enormously charismatic and is made to look uncannily (and I do mean uncannily) like the young Sean Connery of "Dr. No" and "Goldfinger."

Portland Oregonian by Shawn Levy

Nest of Spies may be a small, subtitled release, but it's also a gauntlet thrown at the feet of the upcoming big-screen adaptation of "Get Smart." See it and you'll have a substantial idea of what a spy comedy should be.

The A.V. Club by Tasha Robinson

The film bounces along on cheap but entertaining Mel Brooks-worthy audio and visual gags, like the live-chicken-throwing fight, or the sequence where the camera discreetly pans away from Dujardin and a partner making out on his hotel bed--only to focus on a full-length mirror in which they're still fully visible.

Austin Chronicle by Marc Savlov

A consistently entertaining parody that never once makes you feel like an idiot for laughing out loud at its idiocy.

San Francisco Chronicle by Walter Addiego

A giddy French comedy.

TV Guide Magazine by Maitland McDonagh

A huge hit in France, Michel Hazanavicius' straight-faced spy spoof unleashes a French operative of incomparable incompetence on the volatile Middle East of 1955.

Entertainment Weekly by Owen Gleiberman

There are more chuckles than laughs, but the film does a witty job of replicating the hermetic, overlit shot language of '60s studio movies.

Chicago Sun-Times by Roger Ebert

For a parody, the movie is surprisingly competent in some of the action scenes, when the dim-witted hero turns out to have lightning improvisational skills.

Village Voice

A frequently uproarious send-up of Jean Bruce's long-running series of spy novels.

Salon by Andrew O'Hehir

Director Michel Hazanavicius captures the jet-age atmosphere, form-fitting wardrobes, jazz-ethnic soundtrack and bouffant hairdos of JFK/de Gaulle-era espionage films in perfect detail, but it's Dujardin's performance as the suave, confident and utterly clueless Hubert Bonisseur de la Bath (to Francophones, a name that drips with phony aristocratic pretension) that gives "OSS 117" its edge.

Los Angeles Times

Light and fun, if also a little slight, OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies is like a pleasant sorbet to wash away the aftertaste of the pre-summer clunkers.

Variety by Lisa Nesselson

A spy spoof that -- rarity of rarities -- represents a remake actually worth making. Current comic fave Jean Dujardin plays title character OSS 117 as a kind of James Bond crossed with Maxwell Smart.

Village Voice by Scott Foundas

A frequently uproarious send-up of Jean Bruce's long-running series of spy novels.

Premiere by Glenn Kenny

It hardly adds up to much, but it doesn't mean to, and it'll leave you with a cleaner conscience than an Austin Powers picture.

The New York Times by A.O. Scott

Not that Cairo, Nest of Spies is meant to be a thriller, but even as a self-consciously anachronistic knockabout farce it rarely rises to the level of wit, either verbal or physical.

New York Post by V.A. Musetto

Let the French stick to love stories and leave stupid comedies to Tinseltown.