Friday soars every time John Witherspoon (as Craig’s dad) is on screen, embarking on unstoppable improv jags about his job as a dog catcher.

| Jan 22, 2025

This film is a laugh a minute and portrays realistic characters each of us can relate to.

| May 16, 2022

Director F. Gary Gray chooses to develop tension in this often over-the-top farce in a very unfunny, almost baffling way.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Apr 26, 2022

Crapping jokes and cussing jokes and look at that lady in her skimpy clothes jokes. I enjoyed this badly, stupidly, as it was meant to be enjoyed.

| Jun 21, 2019

While the character-driven script has a weakness for toilet humor (Mel Brooks would be proud), its inhabitants are given some oddball quirks and tics that keep things percolating when the plot development runs a little thin.

| Apr 26, 2019

The characters are what make this. Deebo is iconic.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jan 28, 2019

Really funny, filmed great, with a lot of heart to it.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jan 28, 2019

I knew the picture was in trouble when its first gag involved an old lady spewing obscenities.

| Original Score: 1/4 | Aug 16, 2017

Co-scriptwriters Ice Cube, DJ Pooh, and director F. Gary Gray find as much humor in well-observed detail as in the oddities of the film's world.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jul 25, 2010

Friday has energy, and sass, and the nerve to suggest that the line between tragedy and comedy may be in the bloodshot eye of the beholder.

| Original Score: B | Jul 6, 2010

The original installment in the outrageous slacker trilogy starring Ice Cube.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Sep 7, 2009

A new generation of black talent (director Gray, actors Chris Tucker and Ice Cube) bring verve to this much welcome comedic view of street life in South Central, after mostly crime and drug pictures set there.

| Original Score: B | Aug 21, 2008

A crudely made, sometimes funny bit of porchfront humor from the 'hood.

Full Review | Jul 25, 2008

Synthesizes blaxploitation and pot-comedy genres and melds them into a colossus of unending laughs.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Jul 8, 2005

It has a certain crude, rambling charm.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Mar 2, 2005

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 5, 2004

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Mar 12, 2004

Gray's direction is painfully flat, and curiously -- especially for a popular music video director like Gray -- lacking any interesting visual style.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Nov 6, 2003

...much of the humor sailed right over my caucasian head.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Nov 6, 2003

Cube's charm and Tucker's frantic antics can carry the movie only so far before the wall-to-wall profanity, constant vulgar humor and male chauvinist ogling wear out their welcome.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Nov 6, 2003