Name : Peter Hartlaub / Alias : San Francisco Chronicle
Happily, the filmmakers build a reservoir of goodwill in the first hour.

Name : Linda Barnard / Alias : Toronto Star
Jillian Bell's brief scenes as Zach's Bedazzling-obsessed singleton aunt are fun. So is Darren Lemke's solid script, which leans heavily on groaners and bad jokes to balance scares.

Name : Inkoo Kang / Alias : TheWrap
Goofily self-aware and wholesomely boisterous, it's a children's picture whose sense of spooky fun readily diverts from its quibble-worthy messaging.

Name : Kevin P. Sullivan / Alias : Entertainment Weekly
It's a never-boring trip to a world, where stories and imagination are powerful tools, that just might inspire kids to do the scariest thing of all: pick up a book.

Name : Bruce Kirkland / Alias : Toronto Sun
This Goosebumps ride may be bumpy, but it works and it is worthwhile.

Name : Tom Russo / Alias : Boston Globe
It's the best treat we've gotten this Halloween, and definitely not just a bigger-budgeted version of the "Goosebumps" seen on TV.

Name : Peter Travers / Alias : Rolling Stone
Jack Black fires up a stampede of comic terrors ready made for Halloween. Sure it's exhausting. But Goosebumps, knowing its audience, lets it rip.

Name : Molly Eichel / Alias : Philadelphia Inquirer
Goosebumps fulfills its purpose, and that's what matters.

Name : Adam Graham / Alias : Detroit News
Goosebumps isn't detached or ironic, nor does it pretend to be something it's not. It's a bonus for fans who pored over the books and it celebrates the fun side of things going bump in the night.

Name : Nicolas Rapold / Alias : New York Times
"Goosebumps" would seem to yield the serial pleasures a voracious Stineophile might desire.

Name : James Berardinelli / Alias : ReelViews
At a guess, I'd say that Goosebumps will satisfy its core audience - fans of R.L. Stine's popular children's books - and bore pretty much everyone else.

Name : Michael Rechtshaffen / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
An amusing, fearlessly over-the-top screen rendering of the book franchise.

Name : A.A. Dowd / Alias : AV Club
As effects-heavy time-wasters go, Goosebumps is mostly harmless, even sporadically amusing. But it isn't likely to keep anyone up at night, out of fear or excitement.

Name : Geoff Berkshire / Alias : Variety
Turns an endearing collection of silly spooky stories into a busy, noisy, soulless eyesore.

Name : Glenn Whipp / Alias : Los Angeles Times
I have no idea as to the extent of the actual Stine's peculiarities, but just going from his weird, wonderful work, every scene in the movie feels authentic compared with the version I carry of him in my head.

Name : Kate Taylor / Alias : Globe and Mail
It gently mocks the traditions of the genre - giant preying mantis rips roof off high school - while never getting too frightening.

Name : Stephanie Merry / Alias : Washington Post
The production values are better suited for a television movie, and the music, by Danny Elfman, is distractingly intrusive.

Name : Alan Scherstuhl / Alias : Village Voice
The filmmakers, to their great credit, spend more than half the running time bending their studio tentpole release to the spirit of Stine rather than cramming Goosebumps into their template.

Name : Stephen Whitty / Alias : Newark Star-Ledger
The pace is great, with the last hour being an all-out monster attack, as all of Stine's creatures - a werewolf, zombies, a mummy, murderous garden trolls and a particularly sarcastic ventriloquist's dummy - go on the rampage.

Name : Kyle Smith / Alias : New York Post
A special-effects extravaganza that skips over basics like coming up with an interesting origination myth for the creepy creatures who bring havoc to a sleepy suburb.

Name : Colin Covert / Alias : Minneapolis Star Tribune
A tongue-in-cheek love note to spook stories of yesteryear, "Goosebumps" is a kid-friendly crowd pleaser adults can love, too.

Name : Bilge Ebiri / Alias : New York Magazine/Vulture
It's a cheerful, nasty delight.

Name : Britton Peele / Alias : Dallas Morning News
Goosebumps is chock full of fun moments whether they're all logical or not, and it's an adventure that should appeal to both young viewers new the series and older readers who devoured them as kids.

Name : Bill Goodykoontz / Alias : Arizona Republic
The film goes too wide and gets a little soft at the end, but not fatally so. It's the rare horror film - well, sort of horror - that you and your children can enjoy together.

Name : Bill Zwecker / Alias : Chicago Sun-Times
Black gets to show us his ability to play nasty, distant and angry - all in a way we really have never seen from him before. The bottom line is: It works perfectly.

Name : Todd McCarthy / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
The Interview has the comic batting average of a mediocre-to-average Saturday Night Live sketch .

Name : Joe Morgenstern / Alias : Wall Street Journal
The remarkably dismal quality is emblematic of the mind-set that brought the movie, and its attendant crises, into being.

Name : G. Allen Johnson / Alias : San Francisco Chronicle
Imagine "Harold and Kumar Go to North Korea," or "Bill and Ted's Excellent North Korean Adventure" or even "The Road to Pyongyang" starring Bob Hope and Bing Crosby. You get the idea.

Name : Colin Covert / Alias : Minneapolis Star Tribune
There's a whip-smart, pointed comedy in "The Interview." Unfortunately it's buried in there. Really deep.

Name : Aisha Harris / Alias : Slate
If you like your dictator mockery served on a sharper, smarter dish, you should probably just do what everyone else seems to be doing, and rewatch Team America: World Police.

Name : Peter Travers / Alias : Rolling Stone
It's stupid. It's in bad taste. It impossible. I know all that. But Rogen's instinct to try anything for giggles and sticking it to dictatorial assholes is worth fighting for. Screw Kim if he can't take a joke.

Name : David Edelstein / Alias : New York Magazine/Vulture
It's certainly smutty-and infantile. Maybe half the jokes miss. But it is a truly savage work.

Name : Rafer Guzman / Alias : Newsday
Like their affable, ignorant characters, Rogen and Franco seem in way over their heads with "The Interview."

Name : Stephen Whitty / Alias : Newark Star-Ledger
That something so carefully slapdash and happily juvenile actually resulted in cyber-sabotage and threats of violence is, in itself, an enormous kind of joke. Too bad it's the biggest one here.

Name : Scott Foundas / Alias : Variety
About as funny as a communist food shortage, and just as protracted.

Name : Wesley Morris / Alias : Grantland
What's wrong with The Interview is that it doesn't know how to be the singeing comedy it wants.

Name : Peter Howell / Alias : Toronto Star
Te best satire provokes and even outrages, and Rogen, Franco and Goldberg certainly succeed on that score.

Name : Stephanie Zacharek / Alias : Village Voice
Offers a few moments of casual brilliance but otherwise trips itself up in the threads of its contrived absurdity.

Name : Claudia Puig / Alias : USA Today
The Interview fails to live up to the hype, floundering as a rowdy comedy as it grows duller by the minute.

Name : David Ehrlich / Alias : Time Out New York
The Interview confirms Rogen as the most ambitious mainstream comedian in Hollywood.

Name : Tirdad Derakhshani / Alias : Philadelphia Inquirer
The film is not a dangerous weapon, or a tool for anti-Korean propaganda. It does kill, but with comedy.

Name : Joe Neumaier / Alias : New York Daily News
In their third film together, Franco and Rogen have a terrific banter and an underlay of affection. This kind of rapport is rare.

Name : Ty Burr / Alias : Boston Globe
Everyone here is in way over his or her head.

Name : Betsy Sharkey / Alias : Los Angeles Times
Characterizing it as satire elevates the creative execution of the film's very silly faux assassination of North Korea's leader Kim Jong Un far beyond what it merits.

Name : Joe McGovern / Alias : Entertainment Weekly
A dangerous comedy about a dangerous regime shouldn't be safe for suburban dads.

Name : Joe Williams / Alias : St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Bluntly funny and ever-so-slightly sweet.

Name : Christy Lemire / Alias : ChristyLemire.com
This is what all the fuss was about?

Name : Jake Coyle / Alias : Associated Press
"The Interview" struggles to really illuminate anything about the stranger-than-fiction Orwellian nightmare that is North Korea, but its attempt is admirable. It deserves to be seen.

Name : Ben Kenigsberg / Alias : AV Club
Much of the film is devoted to the hit-and-miss (but strangely moving) riffing between the leading men.

Name : Sara Stewart / Alias : New York Post
Hate to say it, but this film ain't half the satire it could have been.

Name : Alonso Duralde / Alias : TheWrap
While The Interview never slacks in its mission to tell jokes, it's such a messy and meandering movie that it never quite lands as a satire of politics or the media or anything else.

Name : A.O. Scott / Alias : New York Times
Its lesson is that American pop culture is inescapable, our great achievement and most popular export, the weapon we wield abroad and the glue trap we struggle with at home.

Name : Richard Corliss / Alias : TIME Magazine
Maybe you will love The Interview - if you can ever see the movie - as much as some people hate or fear it. But if you're hoping for any cogent political satire here, then the joke's on you.