A charmless idiot, a clumsy rip-off of Jackass and one more tiresome exercise in arrested adolescence -- add them up and you have Hot Rod.

| Original Score: 0/4 | Mar 31, 2019

Sandberg has a stubborn charm that should win over even the most jaded veteran of post-[Napoleon] Dynamite comedy.

| Mar 31, 2019

The Jackass-ification of mainstream American comedy continues, but where are the laughs?

| Mar 31, 2019

Hot Rod emerges as a daffy, dorky summer surprise, a silly comedy of non sequiturs that feels like a cockeyed collaboration between Will Ferrell and Mel Brooks.

| Original Score: 4/5 | May 1, 2008

Silly but funny.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Sep 29, 2007

Well worth checking out, then, if you like your comedy supremely silly, but ultimately memorable only as a series of great skits mixed in with some dead patches.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Sep 28, 2007

Though it's as disposable as a plastic razor, Hot Rod is not without a few good yuks.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Sep 25, 2007

If you're looking for plausibility, this is not your movie. If you're looking for laughs, this is not your movie. If you like seeing delusional overgrown adolescents fall down a lot, then this one's for you.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Sep 1, 2007

We know from the Lazy Sunday bits Samberg's a funny guy, but he doesn't have enough to work with here.

Full Review | Aug 9, 2007

Hot Rod started to go bad about the time someone in casting said, "You know what? I'll bet America is just about ready for the comedy stylings of Sissy Spacek."

| Original Score: 1/4 | Aug 5, 2007

Samberg and Schaffer just didn't provide enough gas for this groaning moped of a movie, and it fizzles out before Rod even gets to the ramp.

Full Review | Aug 3, 2007

Samberg can't carry this, though director Akiva Schaffer supplies some hilarious, Jackass-style wipeouts.

| Aug 3, 2007

Imagine a Stand by Me on wheels, with dialogue spoken by 20-something actors instead of 12-year-olds, and you have the essence of the script.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Aug 3, 2007

There's something that seems almost important about this picture. The creators have harnessed everything that's good about YouTube, and translated it into a big-screen movie.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Aug 3, 2007

A perfect storm of absurdist sight gags and sketch-comedy consciousness. Somewhere in there is the wobbly shape of a story, which Schaffer and company stretch to its limits without entirely losing the movie's cartoonish premise.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Aug 3, 2007

Most of the jokes either drag on endlessly or are cut short without a real punch line.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Aug 3, 2007

A lasting problem with so many SNL-populated movies is the ingrown clubbiness of its humor -- the suggestion, whether overt or implied, that comedy is nothing more than a funny idea flogged to death by a fraternity of late-night wags.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Aug 3, 2007

Consistently laugh-aloud funny, a guilty chucklefest of ridiculous stunts, gleeful pummelings and questionable jokes that looks as if it were made by high school buddies who had a few weeks to kill.

| Original Score: B | Aug 3, 2007

Director Akiva Schaffer apparently thinks that by adding stupid stunts to the formula, Hot Rod also can attract the Jackass crowd.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Aug 3, 2007

It's funny pretty much all the way through, even in the final showdown between Rod and his stepdad. I have seen countless movie fights that stagger the imagination, but this one goes over the top and comes down on the other side.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Aug 3, 2007