Name : Rafer Guzman / Alias : Newsday
Lacks the wickedly funny spirit of the original "Vacation."

Name : Stephanie Zacharek / Alias : Village Voice
This new Vacation is hardly an improvement on the old Vacation, and may in fact be worse. Neither of them, to borrow the immortal words of the Go-Go's, is all we ever wanted.

Name : Lou Lumenick / Alias : New York Post
That sound you hear is John Hughes and Harold Ramis, the writer and director of the original, rolling over in their graves. And not from laughter, which is in very short supply here.

Name : James Berardinelli / Alias : ReelViews
Vacation passes the most important test of any comedy: it's funny.

Name : J. R. Jones / Alias : Chicago Reader
Respectably funny.

Name : Lindsey Bahr / Alias : Associated Press
Vacation is an over-the-top, often hilarious homage to the original from the earnest and talented writing-directing team of John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein.

Name : David Ehrlich / Alias : Time Out
A rare reboot so foul and humorless it makes you question whatever attachment you might have to the original, this lazy retread of Harold Ramis's 1983 Vacation sours everything that's made that film such an undying fixture of basic cable.

Name : Molly Eichel / Alias : Philadelphia Inquirer
There's nothing to say that crass can't be funny - and it sometimes is in Daley and Goldstein's iteration - but Vacation loses any of the ooey-gooey, family-friendly heart that made you really want Clark to get to Walley World to begin with.

Name : Bilge Ebiri / Alias : New York Magazine/Vulture
Vacation is lazy, idiotic, and gross - and I laughed my ass off at it.

Name : Ty Burr / Alias : Boston Globe
It holds on to the original's acrid cynicism for the first 40 minutes or so before turning predictable and bland. There are some real, nasty laughs to be had here, but they're front-loaded.

Name : Bruce Demara / Alias : Toronto Star
It's taken more than 30 years for a new family of Griswolds to make an ill-fated cross-country trip to Walley World. Worth the wait? Not really.

Name : Bill Goodykoontz / Alias : Arizona Republic
It falls to Helms to carry the movie, and he's not quite up to it.

Name : Chris Nashawaty / Alias : Entertainment Weekly
The new Vacation is both better than I'd feared and not as hilarious as I'd hoped. It's intermittently funny and instantly forgettable.

Name : Alonso Duralde / Alias : TheWrap
All too true to the experience of taking a long family trip: there are a few special moments you'll remember and talk about later, but for the most part, it's a featureless, repetitive voyage that can't be over soon enough.

Name : Joe Neumaier / Alias : New York Daily News
Everyone deserves a vacation. And everyone deserves a better comedy than "Vacation."

Name : Stephen Farber / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
The filmmakers' unsubtle style is responsible for killing many of the jokes. But they do succeed with several of the performers.

Name : Jeannette Catsoulis / Alias : New York Times
I for one will never look at a blender the same way again.

Name : Neil Genzlinger / Alias : New York Times
A very funny R-rated movie with a PG-13 heart.

Name : Rebecca Keegan / Alias : Los Angeles Times
The kind of movie that exists because greenlighting it is easier than thinking.

Name : Wesley Morris / Alias : Grantland
You can't do much worse at the movies than Vacation.

Name : Karina Longworth / Alias : Village Voice
The psychedelic nightmare sequence alone is a solid testament to Clark's singular aesthetic.

Name : Adam Graham / Alias : Detroit News
Helms' Griswold is a dangerous, moronic maniac, and the filmmakers' disdain for him rubs off on the audience.

Name : Jesse Hassenger / Alias : AV Club
Whenever Daley and Goldstein have the opportunity to make any biting observations or mount sustained original gags, they floor it in the opposite direction.

Name : Michael Phillips / Alias : Chicago Tribune
If any of this was surprising or cleverly timed, you'd laugh and then cringe. In "Vacation" you cringe first and ask questions later.

Name : Stephanie Merry / Alias : Washington Post
No one expects originality, but the new movie may end up making history: It's already looking like the worst movie of the year.

Name : Calum Marsh / Alias : Globe and Mail
There's so much dead air in the film that I wondered whether punchlines had been cleaved out to secure a PG-13 rating, but no: it's a hard, inexplicable R.

Name : Peter Travers / Alias : Rolling Stone
Raucous R-rated fun? You'd think, but the gags smack of desperation.

Name : Mick LaSalle / Alias : San Francisco Chronicle
"Vacation" is consistently funny from beginning to end, a piling on of dumb but inventive jokes and excruciating, awkward situations.

Name : Scott Tobias / Alias : NPR
It's as if Daley and Goldstein started with a list of disgusting topics - outre sex acts, human waste, pubic hair, projectile vomiting, cow cannibalism, et al. - and constructed a narrative around them.

Name : Scott Foundas / Alias : Variety
A trip to the corner store with this cast of characters would be an endurance test - which, with any luck, is as far as the movie's box office returns will carry it.

Name : Colin Covert / Alias : Minneapolis Star Tribune
It spoon-feeds us vanilla fiction to the point of overdose.

Name : Steven Rea / Alias : Philadelphia Inquirer
There'd be a lot less strife and starvation, disease and dread, if Nancy Meyers ruled the world.

Name : Guy Lodge / Alias : Variety
It takes all the leads' considerable combined charm to forestall the aftertaste of the pic's smug life lessons and near-comically blinkered worldview.

Name : David Sims / Alias : The Atlantic
Thanks largely to performances by De Niro and Hathaway, The Intern is a gentle, enjoyable fantasy-and certainly Meyers's best film in more than a decade.

Name : Jesse Hassenger / Alias : AV Club
This kind of unhurried, low-conflict story coming from a mainstream filmmaker might be more invigorating if not for the eventually wearying idealization of the De Niro character and the odd implications that come along with it.

Name : Brian Truitt / Alias : USA Today
The story isn't even contrived, it's ridiculous.

Name : Stephanie Zacharek / Alias : Village Voice
The spongy subtext of this and every Meyers movie is "We're being serious, but we're also being FUN!" No viewer must ever be made to think too much, feel too much, or be left out. She doesn't so much tell a story as lead a team-building exercise.

Name : Peter Travers / Alias : Rolling Stone
It's not much of a movie. But raging bull Robert De Niro, suited up to play for humor and heart, proves he can be a world-class charmer.

Name : Lindsey Bahr / Alias : Associated Press
In keeping everything so polite, The Intern, while being a pleasant and watchable movie, is also entirely ephemeral. Maybe that's why, like Meyers' other films, The Intern will likely be so re-watchable, too.

Name : Rafer Guzman / Alias : Newsday
De Niro and Hathaway's charms plus a sparkling script make for feel-good fluff.

Name : Wesley Morris / Alias : Grantland
There's not much here story-wise. But when Meyers wants to write an involving scene with characters thinking and feeling the way humans think and feel, you want to applaud.

Name : Richard Roeper / Alias : Chicago Sun-Times
With some genuinely insightful dialogue, a number of truly funny bits of physical business, and small scenes allowing us to get know and like a half-dozen supporting players, The Intern grows on us from scene to scene, from moment to moment.

Name : Manohla Dargis / Alias : New York Times
Mr. De Niro owns the movie from the moment he opens his mouth, and is staring into the camera and right at you. (Oh, yes, he's lookin' at you.) You can't look away, and soon you don't want to.

Name : Mark Olsen / Alias : Los Angeles Times
A better, funnier and more considered movie than much of what passes for nonfranchise studio filmmaking, even as it shows a world almost exclusively white, straight and upmarket.

Name : Tom Long / Alias : Detroit News
"The Intern" may be predictable, but it's far from empty.

Name : Cath Clarke / Alias : Time Out
The movie's ideas run out quickly, but De Niro is easygoing, and The Intern is indulgent good fun. Just don't go in expecting nutrition.

Name : L.V. Anderson / Alias : Slate
Nobody does visually pleasing, occasionally funny escapist entertainment about goodhearted rich people trying their best to do the right thing better than Nancy Meyers.

Name : Moira MacDonald / Alias : Seattle Times
Slight but charming, Nancy Meyers' "The Intern" almost goes terribly wrong in its first minutes, but quickly rights itself.

Name : Michael Phillips / Alias : Chicago Tribune
Meyers has wit and a solid sense of craft, but mainly she makes movies about high thread counts and comfy, pricey throw pillows.

Name : Stephen Farber / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
The movie offers more frustrations than rewards to discerning viewers of any age or gender.

Name : Mick LaSalle / Alias : San Francisco Chronicle
The success of this film may ride entirely on the alchemy of these particular actors, but whatever is carrying it, "The Intern" gets there.

Name : Ty Burr / Alias : Boston Globe
"The Intern" is bizarrely retrograde, implying that every working woman only needs a cuddly Yoda daddy to make it in the world of business. It's soft in the heart - and soft in the head.

Name : Richard Brody / Alias : New Yorker
This earnest, effusive haut-bourgeois fantasy, by the writer and director Nancy Meyers, runs roughshod over rational skepticism with the force of her life experience.

Name : Bilge Ebiri / Alias : New York Magazine/Vulture
The Intern degenerates into a series of monologues about ambition and relationships and having it all. As the speeches pile up, our goodwill dissipates, and so does the film's magic.

Name : Calvin Wilson / Alias : St. Louis Post-Dispatch
These days, it's tough to find a comedy that even aspires to sophistication. "The Intern" entertainingly fills that slot.

Name : James Berardinelli / Alias : ReelViews
In terms of comedic and dramatic content, The Intern is hit-and-miss. Notions about ageism and corporate prejudice against female CEOs are grazed but not explored in a meaningful or compelling way.

Name : J. R. Jones / Alias : Chicago Reader
There are a few good laughs, but they struggle to survive amid the syrupy score, overlit interiors, and smothering sense of middle-class entitlement.

Name : Ann Hornaday / Alias : Washington Post
"The Intern" feels a little bit like the tai chi exercises that Ben does in the park throughout the film - you look for something to react to and laugh at and maybe even shed a tear about, but you wind up pushing against a puff of air.

Name : Liz Braun / Alias : Toronto Sun
Only the impressive chemistry between Robert De Niro and Anne Hathaway will keep you watching; we haven't even mentioned the painfully ageist sex jokes or the silly plot developments that unfold like sitcom padding.

Name : Stephen Whitty / Alias : Newark Star-Ledger
"The Intern" is like one of those candies you put in your mouth that starts off tasting sweet - until it suddenly turns lip-puckering sour.

Name : Kate Taylor / Alias : Globe and Mail
A movie that doesn't do justice to an invigorating premise.

Name : Leah Greenblatt / Alias : Entertainment Weekly
The tone remains as plush and soft-cornered as one of Meyers' ubiquitous throw pillows (though it's also knowing enough to toss off a good joke about them).

Name : Joe Morgenstern / Alias : Wall Street Journal
This clumsy comedy, written and directed by Nancy Meyers, turns an implausible but intriguing premise into a tale of generational collision that reflects dimly on old and young alike.

Name : James Rocchi / Alias : TheWrap
Considering the movie's fortune-cookie-style "insights" that old and young have much to learn from each other, it's only appropriate that De Niro and Hathaway's charms, and those alone, comprise the saving graces of "The Intern."

Name : Peter Howell / Alias : Toronto Star
If only real life were like a Nancy Meyers movie.

Name : Sara Stewart / Alias : New York Post
Meyers' films have always been about basically decent people navigating life's various hurdles. Here, though, her characters have gone from "It's Complicated" to "It's Pretty Straightforward, Actually."

Name : Bill Goodykoontz / Alias : Arizona Republic
"The Intern" is idiotic, unrealistic, Boomer wish fulfillment that has no business working on any level. I quite enjoyed it.