Q: 1. Public policy is played for laughs rather than dissected in spite, and for 90 minutes we bask in escapist entertainment.
2. A pleasant enough film, but I simply didn't see what all the awards talk is about.
3. The movie's energizing strength is intelligence. It is so entertainingly adult.
4. The political messages come in fits and starts, but the film's bittersweet final section hints at the far-reaching impact of Wilson's efforts, both positive and negative.
5. With its rapid pace, smart screenplay, and top-notch acting, this is one of the 2007 Oscar season's most appealing and compelling adult motion pictures.
6. Perhaps a better way to remember these two colorful characters ... is with a little gem by Gust: 'What brought us together was chasing pussy and killing communists.'
7. The big-screen Charlie Wilson's War, clocking in at 93 fly-by minutes, is dark and funny and mean and sexy, damned near pitch-black-perfect considering that at the end of this boozy comedy you wind up with, oh, Osama bin Laden.
8. There's a stinger in the tail of the story when the happy ending it reaches is no ending at all, but is instead a step on the road to the present day.
9. If Charlie doesn't feel quite real, Hanks at least makes him good company.
10. The film moves along smartly despite being stuffed to bursting with details of arms deals, diplomatic ploys and political maneuvering.
Based on these individual reviews, what is the critic consensus?

A: Consensus: Charlie Wilson's War manages to entertain and inform audiences, thanks to its witty script and talented cast of power players.
1. A riveting troubled teens story that has the unvarnished poignance of first-rank docus (e.g. Streetwise, Decline of Western Civilization III, etc.) on similar thematic turf.
2. Melamed pulls out some fascinatingly understated performances that are just restrained and youthlike enough to be startlingly believable (helped, no doubt, by being filmed in an actual abandoned mental institution).
3. The young cast throw themselves (quite literally) into their demanding assignments with vigor.
4. The movie works only to the extent you get involved with each kid's efforts or inability to adjust to the traumas of his past.
5. It's not that the film has much to say about teen mental illness, but that it creates a world of people about whom we suddenly care.
6. While it neither succeeds nor satisfies as drama, it's a great calling card for the actors involved, principally Joseph Gordon-Levitt.
7. It's too painful and intimate to let you keep its subjects at a safe distance, as most mental illness films do. That, of course, is the point.
8. The film's blurry camerawork, jumpy editing, and oversaturated hues are annoying and distracting.
9. McMurphy lolls in his grave.
10. The texture of "Manic" feels honest and the chemistry of the kids is well observed, but even the modest breakthroughs are dramatic conventions that favor the symbolic over the genuine.
Consensus: A grim drama about emotionally damaged teens, Manic's solid cast helps to elevate the material above cliche.
Q: 1. Van Der Beek's understated performance and Caan's hotdogging are refreshing enough to raise Varsity Blues above its clichés.
2. Varsity Blues eventually fizzles out badly!
3. Already a prime candidate for 1999's worst!
4. Depicts just how difficult it is to stay true to yourself and your dreams when the call of celebrity comes knocking at your door.
5. In addition to the fulfillment of endless high school male fantasies, it also recycles every football and sports movie cliché known to man
6. An utterly formulaic teen sports, sex and suds potboiler!
7. cheap zirconium garbage
8. ...slick, well made, and well acted, but it takes no chances. Seems a wasted opportunity.
9. ...someone could make a very interesting, nuanced film about the exalted place that high school football holds in some parts of Texas... this isn't that film.
10. Van Der Beek and Voight weigh in with convincing performances .
Based on these individual reviews, what is the critic consensus?

A: Consensus: This is a predictable football movie that lacks intensity.
1. Call M. Night Shyamalan a Wood Bender -- this kiddie cast is as flat and stiff as particle board
2. "Battlefield Earth" has a new rival for the title of "worst-film-of-the-last-20-years."
3. A boring, nauseating blockbuster filled with poor editing, painfully wooden acting, unrelenting dullness, and unimpressive special effects. It's so bad that it's gone past good and back to bad again.
4. The trunk of my car is filled with busted 3D glasses and broken dreams of summer movie bliss. But that's not as bad as what's in the trunk of a Paramount Pictures bigwig: A bound and gagged Shyamalan, who's about to have $150 million beat from him.
5. [T]he film works so hard to explain its plot developments that it scarcely has any time left over to dramatize them. Exposition has not merely vanquished mimesis, it has burned its homes to the ground and sown salt in its fields.
6. Stick a fork in M. Night Shyamalan. He's done as a director of consequence after The Last Airbender. Sad.
7. The prospect of sequels to this lumpish and leaden action-adventure is nothing to cheer about.
8. Stilted dialogue, wooden acting, glacial pacing, cheesy special effects, tacky-looking sets, ugly costumes, poorly staged and edited action sequences, all shown in murky, cut-rate 3-D.
9. Fantasy works best off linear narrative clarity, while many scene transitions whirl like air in the hands of Aang. Yet, Night ignites the separate moments with visual magic worthy of his mythology.
10. It captivated my imagination.
Consensus: The Last Airbender squanders its popular source material with incomprehensible plotting, horrible acting, and detached joyless direction.
Q: 1. It is a toxically funny exercise in vulgarity of the sort for which the First Amendment appears to have been invented.
2. Let me reiterate. This movie is really, really dirty.
3. [P]robably the filthiest movie ever made. It's also hilarious and possibly one of the best studies of comedy put on film.
4. Choppy editing sabotages the viewer's ability to appreciate the comic's performance, thus undermining what is arguably the movie's chief reason for being.
5. Exudes cheerfulness and expansive joy.
6. You'd think that hearing the same joke told dozens of time in a row would get boring, and you'd be right - some of the time. But when a comic captures fire, look out.
7. See it if you aren't too jaded to appreciate a few laughs in these mostly mirthless times.
8. Did you hear the one about the 100 clueless comics who thought they were hilarious just because they said f--k eighteen times on camera?
9. It takes an extremely open mind and a strong constitution to stomach a lot of this.
10. 86 minutes is a long time to spend dissecting one joke, no matter how outrageously filthy it is.
Based on these individual reviews, what is the critic consensus?

A:
Consensus: Can a joke stand up to repeated tellings? Hilarious and revealing of the way comedy works, The Aristocrats demonstrates that it's possible.