60
You can be chuckling one minute then cowering and cringing the next, which tinges the humor with apprehension and taints the brutality with absurdity. That isn't to say that the combo doesn't work at all.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
50
The Family is a fish-out-of-water/buddy comedy/Mob flick. But most of all, it's a missed opportunity.
25
The Family is ultimately a headache, nearly two hours of baseball bat beatings and dull witticisms, with zero inventiveness or energy.
25
Slant Magazine by Jesse Cataldo
A film whose only distinguishing characteristic is how big a mess it makes of its already meager ambitions.
20
New York Daily News by Joe Neumaier
It’s too bad we can’t take a hit out on The Family. This unexciting, unfunny would-be action satire is filled with Italian-American stereotypes, decades-old TV-style Mafia cliches, bits of business that never amount to anything and actors so much better than the hoary, one-joke material.
40
The film is curiously joyless and inert.
50
Rolling Stone by Peter Travers
Robert De Niro – wait for it – in the role of a mobster. Now there's an original idea.
75
Miami Herald by Rene Rodriguez
The Family is the rare breed of pitch-black comedy that effectively uses violence for laughs or gasps, depending on the situation.
50
McClatchy-Tribune News Service by Roger Moore
Besson aims his movie at anyone who’s ever held a grudge at an ill-mannered French waiter or clerk (haughty, and by the way, they’d NEVER condescend to speak to you in English). If that includes you, The Family has serves up a little wish-fulfillment payback, with a baseball bat.
60
The New York Times by Stephen Holden
The movie has holes galore. It has abrupt tonal shifts, an incoherent back story and abandoned subplots. It doesn’t even try for basic credibility. But buoyed by hot performances, it sustains a zapping electrical energy.