For the most part, the first "live action" feature by Andrew Stanton, is graphically splendiferous and enjoyably nonsensical.

| Feb 25, 2019

Isn't the disaster some industry observers predicted, but it's not the high-gloss masterpiece some of us hoped for either.

| Original Score: 5/10 | Apr 5, 2012

A mess.

Full Review | Mar 26, 2012

The finished entity feels like a rip-off of a film that ripped-off several rip-offs of Carter's own ancient source material.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Mar 19, 2012

A century in the making, Disney's John Carter is a superlative cinematic fantasy that's without question the single most entertaining thing I've had the pleasure to see in 2012 so far.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Mar 17, 2012

As one of Pixar's star players, Stanton is an experienced cinematic storyteller, which is why it's disappointing that his first live-action project is so unwieldy at times.

| Original Score: 2.1/2 | Mar 16, 2012

Director Andrew Stanton, making his first live-action feature after the successful Pixar animated films FINDING NEMO and WALL-E, hasn't been able to bring anything very new to the familiar story of battles among rival forces on another planet:

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5 | Mar 9, 2012

Stanton should go back to making machines talk. He puts much more humanity into them than he manages to extract from Burroughs, even with all that nostalgia working for him.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Mar 9, 2012

There's a delightfully unfashionable cheesiness about John Carter, a film for all the family, but in particular sci-fi fantasy geeks and older gentlemen who have never been able to relinquish the spiffing derring-do of Burroughs.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Mar 9, 2012

The most indelible performance in the film is not, strictly speaking, a performance at all. Rather it is Woola, a six-legged Martian hound who rather resembles a cross between a bulldog and a fetal gila monster.

| Mar 9, 2012

The reported $250 million price tag for John Carter gives one pause. I suppose one could argue that masterpieces have no price. Then again, John Carter is no masterpiece.

| Original Score: C+ | Mar 9, 2012

Where John Carter continually gets it right is pacing, levity, and breadth of story.

| Original Score: B | Mar 9, 2012

While we can still marvel at the amazing sights laid out before us, it is imperative that we never lose sight of who's who and what's at stake. That turns out to be a tall order.

| Original Score: 2.1/2 | Mar 9, 2012

John Carter is arriving late to the party, after George Lucas had already pillaged the source material and squeezed it for every dollar it was worth. Stanton has created a sci-fi adventure that feels both old hat and sub-par.

| Original Score: 58/100 | Mar 9, 2012

It isn't bad so much as innocuous, $250-million worth of innocuous, framed by a decent start and a solid finish but sagging through the long middle like a cheap mattress.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Mar 9, 2012

Though messy and overlong, it's an enjoyable throwback to the movie spectacles of a more innocent age.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Mar 9, 2012

"John Carter" is a huge bore.

| Original Score: D+ | Mar 9, 2012

Gets off to such an incoherent start that it takes almost the entire, interminable two-hour-plus running time to catch up.

| Original Score: 1/4 | Mar 9, 2012

The villains are overwrought and the design of Mars is surprisingly bland.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Mar 8, 2012

It takes a while to get going and is about half an hour too long, but "John Carter" has some spectacular visuals and well-staged action scenes.

| Original Score: B | Mar 8, 2012