Q: 1. Sure, it strains credulity, but it's clever, well-paced and builds to a spectacular -- if not altogether satisfying -- conclusion.
2. Good looking, tightly controlled thriller. An exhilarating ride that prepares the ground for Fight Club.
3. Regardless of how far one chooses to buy into The Game -- and the ending ambiguously suggests that it could go on and on -- there is no doubt as to Fincher's staggering expertise as a director and his almost clinical sense of precision.
4. "The Game" is a thrilling end run of deception in which a master manipulator is masterfully manipulated.
5. [N]ifty filmic style and crackpot sensibility.
6. Well-written, expertly paced, and undeniably riveting, The Game is perhaps most impressive in the way it strips down the Nicholas Van Orton character. The whole process is very layered and each layer breaks down Nicholas even more than the last.
7. This is one of those movies that's so tightly written and densely plotted, it leaves no room for error -- or viewer queries. Unfortunately, the questions will start flying even before the picture's over.
8. This 1997 thriller is fairly entertaining nonsense if all you're looking for is 128 minutes of diversion. But if you'd like something more from David Fincher, the director of Seven, don't get your hopes up.
9. The film's 'message' about complacency transformed by chaos and uncertainty is hackneyed...
10. A solid original screenplay -- one of the best out of Hollywood this year.
Based on these individual reviews, what is the critic consensus?

A: Consensus: The ending could use a little work but this is otherwise another sterling example of David Fincher's iron grip on atmosphere and storytelling.


Q: 1. Daddy Day Camp is a recruiting poster for kids, insisting that there's no domestic problem that military values can't solve.
2. Poison ivy would be less painful.
3. Daddy Day Camp suffers all the near-classic sequel handicaps.
4. Memo to Cuba: if you're offered the lead in a sequel to Murphy's Pluto Nash, say no.
5. The minstrelsy of Gooding Jr.'s performance is abhorrent but no more offensive than the showboating that won him the Oscar.
6. A lazy, juvenile, starkly unfunny and consistently unrelatable family film.
7. The actors obviously see the movie only as a paycheck, but the check should have a note at the bottom that says, 'Shame on you!'
8. By now you've seen most of the visual gags. A bus drives into a building. An outhouse explodes.
9. Gates and Rae are game, but not funny in the least. The kids are stereotypes, and not particularly amusing ones.
10. A Cuba Gooding, Jr. kind of boyz in the woods career trajectory switch.
Based on these individual reviews, what is the critic consensus?

A: Consensus: A mirthless, fairly desperate family film, Daddy Day Camp relies too heavily on bodily functions for comedic effect, resulting in plenty of cheap gags but no laughs.


Q: 1. Disappointing, but diverting; I was expecting the man-eating hammerhead, but not the lecture on 'moral relativism' from the local sheriff.
2. Most lacking is any sense of humor or style in a film that aspires to mediocrity and achieves it all too easily.
3. [Leaves] you with nothing more than a few poke-y moments and wistful memories of Piranha 3D.
4. ... a new movie genre: sharxploitation ...
5. Enjoyably trashy Jaws/Piranha rip-off, enlivened by likeable performances and some impressive 3D effects, but the plot is laugh-out-loud ridiculous and there's an oddly prudish approach to gore and nudity.
6. Little more than a brain damaged, irony-free, and curiously toothless attempt to retread the success of last year's surprising summer gorefest, Piranha 3D.
7. This is a pretty bad movie that (I think) knows it's a pretty bad movie. What keeps it from being even worse and entering into the useless 'torture porn' genre is its PG-13 rating, which teeters on the brink of 'R' territory throughout.
8. A bad taste frenzy, with cameras tied to the bellies of some beasts contained by crooks in a salt water lake.
9. How delicious would it be if we were to look back and find that the current lousy 3D trend "jumped the shark" with a film that actually features jumping sharks?
10. Look, here's the short of it: This is pretty dumb movie. Ok it's a very dumb movie.
Based on these individual reviews, what is the critic consensus?

A: Consensus: A joyless excursion into the water that doesn't even produce good gore or nudity thanks to the neutered PG-13 rating.


Q: 1. Shot piecemeal over the course of four years on locations in 18 countries, The Fall is a genuine labor of love -- and a real bore.
2. This whacked-out fairy tale for grown-ups is as stunning in its beauty as it is in its lack of logic.
3. Some of the set pieces are ravishing, more often they're ravishingly clunky.
4. For a film that wants to present itself as extravagantly dazzling, there is something thuddingly familiar and bland in its vision.
5. This is a feast for the eyes and a famine for the brain.
6. [Tarsem] Singh's visual sense is stunning, but he's also attuned to the darker corners of children's imaginations.
7. The Fall is aptly named not only because it pertains to a tragic descent but because viewers will feel as if they have plunged headlong into an alternate universe with this dazzling adult fairy tale.
8. Each and every of Tarsem's visuals scratch onerously at the mind, heart, and cornea.
9. A paean to the art of storytelling as it existed before mass-produced visual media replaced the spoken word as the primary creative medium.
10. The scope of Tarsem's imagination and vision and the delightful pairing of Pace and Untaru creates an eclectic fantasy tale unlike anything we've since The Adventures of Baron Munchausen.
Based on these individual reviews, what is the critic consensus?

A:
Consensus: More visually elaborate than the fragmented story can sometimes support, The Fall walks the line between labor of love and filmmaker self-indulgence.