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 : Kenneth Turan / Alias : Los Angeles Times
You're initially jazzed by his effrontery, but Deadpool, with his relentlessly glib, nothing-sacred attitude, is not an individual who wears particularly well.

Name : Leah Pickett / Alias : Chicago Reader
Fans of X-Men will gobble it up, especially lewd teenage boys; newcomers to the Marvel Universe may miss some of the best zingers.

Name : Mick LaSalle / Alias : San Francisco Chronicle
This is bad, borderline garbage, but disturbing, too, in that it's just the kind of fake-clever awfulness that might be cinema's future.

Name : Barry Hertz / Alias : Globe and Mail
Deadpool is everything that Hollywood has raised audiences to believe heroes are not: crass, selfish and with a vocabulary that would have made George Carlin blush.

Name : Christopher Orr / Alias : The Atlantic
Flamboyantly vulgar and determinedly self-referential, Deadpool has the shape of a superhero movie but the soul of a Danny McBride flick.

Name : Brian Truitt / Alias : USA Today
Deadpool avoids enough pitfalls to both embrace and flambe the superhero genre while also finding time for romance, doling out equal handfuls of bullets, barbs and warm fuzzies.

Name : Peter Travers / Alias : Rolling Stone
this movie's junky feel is part of its charm. Sure it goes on too long and repetition dulls its initial cleverness. Still, Deadpool is party time for action junkies and Reynolds may just have found the role that makes his career.

Name : Cary Darling / Alias : Fort Worth Star-Telegram/DFW.com
Deadpool succeeds where other irreverent send-ups of the genre failed. [But] the over-the-top mayhem, do-you-kiss-your-mother-with-that-mouth trash talk, and jokey cynicism can't stop [it] from hurtling toward predictability.

Name : Soren Anderson / Alias : Seattle Times
Maximally cheeky. Perversely potty-mouthed. Riotously funny. Insanely violent. Uneven as all get out. And fun, fun, fun.

Name : Tom Russo / Alias : Boston Globe
Imagine Spider-Man with legitimately funny quips, waaay less angst, and a bug-eyed getup that's lethally accessorized.

Name : Will Leitch / Alias : The New Republic
Deadpool is obnoxious and puerile and infantile and has an irritating meta tone so snide that it's constantly in danger of nullifying the entire movie - and I still got a pretty big kick out of it.

Name : Adam Graham / Alias : Detroit News
Reynolds has never meshed as well with a character or found a better outlet for his smirking, smart aleck persona.

Name : Tirdad Derakhshani / Alias : Philadelphia Inquirer
Deadpool is, on the whole, a big bowl of fun filled with great stunts, gory fight scenes, and sexy poses.

Name : Colin Covert / Alias : Minneapolis Star Tribune
Is it a hoot? Largely, yeah, if you like smug, dumb in-your-face humor.

Name : Ethan Sacks / Alias : New York Daily News
The politically incorrect material suits Ryan Reynolds as snugly as Marvel's tight red costume, giving the Canadian actor a chance to work out his mutant power for hurling snarky one-liners.

Name : Britton Peele / Alias : Dallas Morning News
Calling Deadpool "just another comic book movie" would do injustice to a film that makes a strong effort to deliver something different.

Name : Justin Chang / Alias : Variety
Ryan Reynolds gets the full-throttle wisecracking showcase he deserves in this scabrously funny origin story.

Name : Peter Howell / Alias : Toronto Star
Reynolds' mighty mutant title character is anything but a conventional superdude, even before he acquires his extreme skills, red-hooded cosplay costume and scarred face and mind.

Name : Alan Scherstuhl / Alias : Village Voice
Deadpool benefits from an intimate story with more heart than you would expect, but also a go-for-broke zeal, edging at times into Naked Gun-style parody.

Name : Bill Goodykoontz / Alias : Arizona Republic
It takes a strong stomach for extreme violence and over-the-top obscenity, but if you're willing to roll with that, "Deadpool" is a hoot.

Name : Todd McCarthy / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
A really raunchy, very dirty and pretty funny goof on the entire superhero ethos, as well as the first Marvel film to irreverently trash the brand.

Name : Stephen Whitty / Alias : Newark Star-Ledger
It's fun, but it's not for everyone, and definitely not for families.

Name : Michael Phillips / Alias : Chicago Tribune
Reynolds is entertaining; it's rather sweet to see this eternally not-quite-a-star get closer than usual to justifying star billing.

Name : A.A. Dowd / Alias : AV Club
Just as Deadpool himself wears a mask to hide his hideous features, Deadpool conceals a highly conventional origin story under a lot of winking self-awareness.

Name : Bob Mondello / Alias : NPR
Deadpool . has the singular virtue of being funnier than we've been led to believe a superhero film can be.

Name : Kyle Smith / Alias : New York Post
There aren't many superhero movies that exploit the liberating effects of the hard-R rating. But to me, the mock opening credits are the only detail that is fresh - sophomoric, but fresh.

Name : Tom Huddleston / Alias : Time Out
Rarely boring, but not half as smart, funny or subversive as it clearly believes itself to be.

Name : Calvin Wilson / Alias : St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Smart, sexy and outrageous, "Deadpool" delivers.

Name : Manohla Dargis / Alias : New York Times
The filmmakers do a lot of winking and rib poking; they sell "Deadpool" so hard that you might wonder if Marvel has started to pay on commission.

Name : Peter Rainer / Alias : Christian Science Monitor
It seems less irreverent than self-congratulatory.

Name : Anthony Lane / Alias : New Yorker
Watching the film is like sitting at dinner with a teen-ager who believes that, if he swears long and loudly enough, he will shock the grownups into accepting him as one of their own.

Name : David Edelstein / Alias : New York Magazine/Vulture
It's not subversive - it's meant to elasticize and enhance the superhero genre, to flatter the audience for being hip enough to get all of those in-jokes. And I was flattered.

Name : Michael O'Sullivan / Alias : Washington Post
It's a voraciously self-aware comedy, one that dines out on the inherent inanity of its own premise as much as it does the movies it's competing with.

Name : Randy Myers / Alias : San Jose Mercury News
While "Deadpool" heralds the arrival of a talented new director, its success belongs to Reynolds, who also served as a producer.

Name : Lindsey Bahr / Alias : Associated Press
In the end, it's hard to shake the feeling that they've made a movie for boys that only adults are allowed to see. For the future sleepover party where some open-minded parent allows a screening, it'll surely be a blast.

Name : Alonso Duralde / Alias : TheWrap
It's a film that's amused with itself, but thanks to a screwball screenplay by Rhett Rheese and Paul Wernick and a charmingly snarky lead turn by Ryan Reynolds, that amusement is both thoroughly earned and completely contagious.

Name : Stephanie Zacharek / Alias : TIME Magazine
Deadpool, intended as a spiky antidote to superhero oversaturation, ends up impaling only itself.

Name : Richard Roeper / Alias : Chicago Sun-Times
If only Deadpool were as clever, dark and funny as it believes itself to be.

Name : James Berardinelli / Alias : ReelViews
This is a different kind of movie. The only rule it adheres to is that tropes are made to be eviscerated, turned on their heads, and trampled over.