King's Ransom

from Film Forum, 04/28/05

Anthony Anderson and Jay Mohr star in yet another comedy bound for video store bargain bins. King's Ransom follows an egomaniacal businessman whose wife targets him for an expensive divorce settlement. He attempts to avoid the consequences by staging his own kidnapping. But the only people who really lose anything are the moviegoers who spend their money on this critically maligned piece of work.

David DiCerto (Catholic News Service) writes that the film is "full of raunchy, irreverent and mean-spirited humor and uniformly unappealing performances … [a] witless waste of 95 minutes, sloppily directed … a royal mess, made all the worse by the fact that it inexcusably got a PG-13 rating."

Adam R. Holz (Plugged In) concludes, "Not only is all of this stuff not funny and potentially damaging culturally, but … it's also exceedingly dull. So if you're tempted to pay a king's ransom (the going rate at most multiplexes these days) to watch this movie, use your money to buy a clue instead. Stay home and stare at the ceiling. I guarantee it will be time better spent."