RKMBs Forums .::Robegories::. Media Savage reviews

On the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes the film holds an approval rating of 14% based on 114 reviews, with an average rating of 3.6/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "Though its visuals are unique, The Spirit's plot is almost incomprehensible, the dialogue is ludicrously mannered, and the characters are unmemorable."[36] Metacritic gave it an aggregate score of 30 out of 100, based on 24 critics, indicating "generally negative reviews".[37] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "C?" on an A+ to F scale.[38]

Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film one out of four stars and said, "There is not a trace of human emotion in it. To call the characters cardboard is to insult a useful packing material".[39]

In a positive review, Ricky Bentley of the Miami Herald said, "Macht manages to meld macho with melodrama to make the Spirit come to life."[40]

Frank Lovece of Newsday, a one-time comic-book writer, found that "gorgeous cinematography and design can't mask the hollow core and bizarre ugliness of this mishandled comics adaptation", and noted that while Eisner's own Spirit was "an average-Joe [...] in a rumpled suit—a vulnerable but insouciant everyman in humanist fables", Miller's Spirit "now has a superpower—a healing factor. Eisner's own spirit must be spinning in its grave".[41]

Chris Barsanti of Filmcritic.com stated, "It's a frankly gorgeous effect, liberated by the fact that Miller adapted freely from Eisner's panels—the two were longtime friends—to create an organic story instead of slavishly following the master's work", and calling it "one of the year's most refreshingly fun films."[42]

Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly, found the movie a "ludicrously knowing and mannered noir pastiche, full of burnt-end romance and 'style', but robotic at its core".[43]

Ken Hanke of Mountain Xpress observed, "The film may not move smoothly—Miller's too fond of 'just damn weird' digressions for that—but it does move and isn't hard to follow. Its screwiness is deliberate and it's all a matter of taste."[44]

A. O. Scott in The New York Times summed up, "To ask why anything happens in Frank Miller's sludgy, hyper-stylized adaptation of a fabled comic book series by Will Eisner may be an exercise in futility. The only halfway interesting question is why the thing exists at all."[45]

In 2010, Empire magazine listed the film at No. 32 on their "Top 50 Worst Movies of All Time" list.[46]