The summer's best vulgar Hollywood farce.

| Jul 30, 2024

DeVito is superb and Judge Reinhold as one of the kidnappers remains a comfortable presence on screen. But Midler nearly steals the show.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jul 27, 2024

...the narrative offers the kinds of twists and turns that wouldn't disgrace a Coen brothers thriller...

| Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 5, 2021

Screenwriter Dale Launer makes the film earn every laugh with well-crafted cleverly set-up situations. This sophisticated handling of the comedy is definitely Ruthless People's strongest asset.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Apr 20, 2021

One tires of the movie's relentlessly shrill tone and its excessively raunchy jokes.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Apr 20, 2021

Like the Los Angeles freeway system, "Ruthless People" is full of twists, turns and nasty people. Unlike the LA. freeway, 'Ruthless People" is a project that works.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Apr 20, 2021

Bette Midler's mastery of lovably obnoxious mannerisms has never had such deliciously wicked exposure, Danny De Vito brings his trademark sleazoid to full seriocomic flower, and Judge Reinhold and Helen Slater approach perfection...

| Original Score: 7/10 | Apr 20, 2021

Directors Jim Abrahams, David Zucker and Jerry Zucker are the same guys who who gave us "Airplane!" six years ago and "Ruthless People" is a lot funnier and meaner.

| Original Score: 7/10 | Apr 20, 2021

There are both belly laughs and chuckles along the way, and comedy that shows the skill of writer, directors and actors, all put together for optimum results.

| Apr 20, 2021

This is Zucker, Zucker and Abraham's best movie since Airplane! although there is enough crude humor and strong profanity for a half-dozen R ratings.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Apr 20, 2021

A great deal of bizarre circumstances occur in this very effective farce, and for any mind that is easily won over by the insistence of shocking humor, it continues to hold a bewildering power to inspire shock, awe and some unforgettable chuckles.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Nov 25, 2015

DeVito and Midler are superb in their roles as the greedy philanderer and his screaming, overbearing other half.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 11, 2014

The characters here aren't just bad; most of them are truly vile -- human slime. And the film makers chew them up (especially two nefarious bonbons played by Danny DeVito and Bette Midler) with the toothsome glee of jolly cannibals.

| Jul 31, 2013

Occasionally crude and tasteless, Ruthless People is a comedy with a vitriolic twist. It`s a comedy about people who love to hate, with actors who make it worth seeing.

| Jul 31, 2013

Much of the fun of this comedy is in watching what happens as virtually everyone in the movie tries to double-cross or otherwise take advantage of everyone else.

| Jul 31, 2013

Call it rude, crude, and lewd, but you also have to call it very funny.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jul 31, 2013

An undemanding but well-executed entertainment.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jul 31, 2013

The people who made Ruthless People probably expect us to laugh... at the pushy people who populate their story. And they're right: We will laugh -- not because we have lousy taste (and wicked thoughts) ourselves, but because their film is genuinely funny.

| Jul 31, 2013

Ruthless People contains some of the biggest laughs of 1986.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jul 31, 2013

At its considerable best, Ruthless People is a riotous anomaly: a very good farce about very bad taste.

| Jul 31, 2013