Name : Rafer Guzman / Alias : Newsday
Streep and Springfield make a surprisingly sweet pair of retirement-age rockers, but the scattered story line keeps losing the beat.

Name : Sara Stewart / Alias : New York Post
The movie itself seems equally divided between the sensibilities of hyperverbal writer Diablo Cody and music-centric director Jonathan Demme, and ends up falling into a muddy gap between the two.

Name : Joshua Rothkopf / Alias : Time Out
Streep finds her way to the soul of several songs. There's devastating connection and tears in these moments: delicate gratitude in "Drift Away," nothing short of maternal redemption in a roaring version of Springsteen's "My Love Will Not Let You Down."

Name : Patrick Dunn / Alias : Detroit News
Streep may have just been looking for some variety and an Oscar. But why is Demme, the great director of "The Silence of the Lambs," wasting his time on this?

Name : Alonso Duralde / Alias : TheWrap
An assemblage of almost-characters in an almost-story, resulting in a very disappointing almost-movie.

Name : Stephen Whitty / Alias : Newark Star-Ledger
While there are some bright notes in Cody's writing, the situations feel a little tired, and the characters unexplored.

Name : Lindsey Bahr / Alias : Associated Press
Ultimately, spending time with these people is pleasant, lived-in, honest and even thought-provoking. And when the dialogue stops, there's a fun, golden not-too-oldies live music soundtrack to hum along with too.

Name : Calvin Wilson / Alias : St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Quite a few filmgoers lament the shortage of movies for adults. "Ricki and the Flash" goes against that trend with rock 'n' roll attitude.

Name : Kenneth Turan / Alias : Los Angeles Times
Diablo Cody's dispiriting screenplay is all about everyone coming to love Ricki, faults and all, and that is just not convincingly done.

Name : Colin Covert / Alias : Minneapolis Star Tribune
Creating a film with solid drama beside good humor is tough. It's harder still to balance them against a complicated character so they don't sprawl lopsided, and to send the audience home feeling satisfied.

Name : Richard Roeper / Alias : Chicago Sun-Times
The skilled veteran Demme alternates dysfunctional family confrontations with easy comedy, expertly peppering in just the right rock tunes along the way. It's hard not to like Ricki, but the film makes no excuses for her actions.

Name : Peter Howell / Alias : Toronto Star
Worth watching, and rocking to.

Name : Bill Goodykoontz / Alias : Arizona Republic
What might have been must be better than what's here, because what's here isn't much.

Name : Peter Rainer / Alias : Christian Science Monitor
Despite Streep's best efforts, Ricki seems more of a contrivance than a flesh-and-blood character.

Name : Preston Jones / Alias : Fort Worth Star-Telegram/DFW.com
The film roars to life too intermittently.but, sadly, too much of Ricki and the Flash is just the same old song.

Name : Tina Hassannia / Alias : Globe and Mail
Regardless of its flimsy emotional interior, Ricki is a worthy addition in this year's growing canon of strong female-centred films, and it would be wise to remember Streep's stunning performance come awards season.

Name : J. R. Jones / Alias : Chicago Reader
The result is cold porridge.

Name : Sheri Linden / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
Even with its well-observed moments, the movie's nonmusical interactions, whether reaching for laughs or poignancy, too often feel flat and forced.

Name : Michael Phillips / Alias : Chicago Tribune
All good protagonists are contradictory tangles of experience and disappointment, but Cody is so tentative in her approach, nothing gathers steam or sticks in emotional terms.

Name : A.O. Scott / Alias : New York Times
"Ricki and the Flash" seems like a squandered opportunity for this humane, curious and liberal-minded filmmaker to reflect on some uncomfortable realities. This isn't really rock 'n' roll. It's easy listening.

Name : Spencer Kornhaber / Alias : The Atlantic
Just when the story beats start to feel unbearably obvious, the film changes keys, becoming less family dramedy than a concert film.

Name : Moira MacDonald / Alias : Seattle Times
Streep's performance, like lightning, jolts everything.

Name : James Berardinelli / Alias : ReelViews
The movie is mature in the way it handles the regrets of absentee parents and the ways in which their children relate to them. There's a little Hollywood artifice here but not so much that the emotions feel inauthentic.

Name : Susanna Schrobsdorff / Alias : TIME Magazine
Streep's latest mom role, as Ricki Rendazzo in Ricki and the Flash, has a light, Mamma Mia! vibe, but it still hits all those hot buttons.

Name : Ann Hornaday / Alias : Washington Post
It's a crowd-pleaser every bit as calculated and earnestly defanged as a Golden Oldies bus-and-truck tour. It's fun while it lasts, even if the Bic lighters stay safely pocketed at the end of the show.

Name : Amy Nicholson / Alias : L.A. Weekly
If only Demme had shot a scene of Ricki stubbing out a joint on a "Cathy" comic strip.

Name : David Edelstein / Alias : New York Magazine/Vulture
Ricki and the Flash swerves near stereotypes and swerves away at every turn.

Name : Steven Rea / Alias : Philadelphia Inquirer
Demme has already made a messed-up family matrimonial get-together way better than this, with a way better screenplay than the one Juno writer Cody has tossed off.

Name : Mick LaSalle / Alias : San Francisco Chronicle
If only Streep would have put down the microphone and let Springfield sing "Jessie's Girl," "Ricki and the Flash" might have had half a chance.

Name : Joe Neumaier / Alias : New York Daily News
The story here, like a lot of bar bands, goes loud to cover up mediocrity. When Streep sings, though, so does the film.

Name : Peter Travers / Alias : Rolling Stone
Director Jonathan Demme, with music in his DNA, offers a heartfelt salute to those who play the underside of rock & roll because, well, they have to. Too bad the rest of the movie is dime-a-dozen family soap opera.

Name : Leah Greenblatt / Alias : Entertainment Weekly
Ricki raises smart questions about why a mother's musical ambitions are so much more selfish than, say, seven-time dad Mick Jagger's, and even the shamelessly corny sing-along finale wrings a few real tears out.

Name : Ty Burr / Alias : Boston Globe
"Ricki and the Flash" feels like "Stella Dallas" as remade by Jean Renoir - it's a humanist suburban fable.

Name : Scott Tobias / Alias : NPR
A warmth radiates through Ricki and the Flash like a song sung true. A film that adores its characters this much is sure to be adored in kind.

Name : Dana Stevens / Alias : Slate
The screenplay doesn't lack for memorable zingers, and thanks to Cody's script and Streep's performance, Ricki emerges as a complex, self-contradictory person (even if most of the supporting characters don't).

Name : Joe Morgenstern / Alias : Wall Street Journal
There are fleeting moments of real fun. Still, it's hard not to wonder why so much in the movie went so wrong.

Name : Andrew Barker / Alias : Variety
This is a shaggy, easily distractible film that consistently defies expectations to both charming and baffling effect.

Name : Wesley Morris / Alias : Grantland
The film, which Diablo Cody wrote and Jonathan Demme directed, is a work of bulk-size bogusness. Barely a single scene is convincing.

Name : Ignatiy Vishnevetsky / Alias : AV Club
As in Demme's best early work (Handle With Care, Melvin & Howard), there is both an affection for a uniquely American type of oddball and a clear-eyed sense of their foibles.

Name : Boyd van Hoeij / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
The characters' online connection allows the filmmakers, who here move away from the slasher genre to something approaching psychological horror, to explore violence as a mindset.

Name : Joe Neumaier / Alias : New York Daily News
Robert Luketic's bland action comedy focuses on the uninteresting relationship between its two bland main characters, and that's the deadliest thing in sight.

Name : Stephen Whitty / Alias : Newark Star-Ledger
There is a potentially rich satirical situation there, as everyone in the couple's dull planned community turn out to be undercover killers. But whatever germ of an idea there is, it's quickly killed by witless writing and migraine-inducing direction.

Name : Claudia Puig / Alias : USA Today
Killers is a lifeless romantic action comedy that might as well have been concocted in a broken beaker, given the paucity of chemistry between the lead actors.

Name : Brian Miller / Alias : L.A. Weekly
If you count the number of hairstyles Katherine Heigl wears in this dreary romcom-with-guns, the tally is likely to be four or five. Ashton Kutcher's facial expressions, one.

Name : Jason Anderson / Alias : Toronto Star
It's pretty much dead in the water as soon as a shirtless Kutcher tries to play suave and utters some terrible French in his first attempt to woo his co-star.

Name : Rob Nelson / Alias : Variety
"Killers" has plenty to offer genre fans - provided they don't bolt during its opening scene of a tied-up woman being beaten to death with a mallet .

Name : Tom Huddleston / Alias : Time Out
Kutcher and Heigl are unable to bring any warmth to what is at heart a bitter, cynical script. Just awful.

Name : Wesley Morris / Alias : Boston Globe
The screenplay has pages I imagine remain only half-filled. Not long after Heigl and Kutcher meet in an elevator, they share this exchange. She: "Huh-huh." He: "Huh." She: "Huuuuuh." This is the language of love for two people coming out of a coma.

Name : Jeannette Catsoulis / Alias : New York Times
A brain-deadening collision of high concept and low standards.

Name : Tirdad Derakhshani / Alias : Philadelphia Inquirer
At a certain point, it actually becomes embarrassing to watch Heigl and Kutcher play at being in love.

Name : Andrea Gronvall / Alias : Chicago Reader
Bob DeRosa and Ted Griffin wrote the script, whose plummeting one-liners leave no actor unscathed.

Name : John Anderson / Alias : Newsday
The mismatch isn't quite of Justin Bieber-Charlize Theron proportions, but Ashton Kutcher and Katherine Heigl play an oddly disjointed pair of lovers, partners and reluctant assassins in Killers.

Name : Rob Nelson / Alias : Variety
Bullets fly and jokes land with a thud.

Name : A.O. Scott / Alias : At the Movies
This should be and could be a really fun and entertaining, silly movie and it isn't.

Name : Robert Abele / Alias : Los Angeles Times
Is it some monstrosity of awfulness, as its lack of advance screening suggested? No, that would imply at least a spark of some kind. This is just an empty summer hodgepodge of stale romantic comedy exchanges, witlessness and lackluster action.

Name : Lisa Schwarzbaum / Alias : Entertainment Weekly
Don't tell me I'm making too much out of nothing, because the steady drip-drip-drip of nothings like this are killing us all.

Name : Scott Tobias / Alias : AV Club
Killers leaves Heigl and Kutcher to bicker over issues of trust and betrayal; being in danger causes more problems in their marriage than it resolves. Killers isn't an entertainment, it's a high-speed spat.

Name : David Fear / Alias : Time Out New York
For someone so classically handsome, Kutcher is surprisingly anticharismatic as a star. A smarmy grin and looking good while shirtless does not equal screen presence, dude.

Name : Roger Moore / Alias : Orlando Sentinel
There's nobody delivering the laughs in this arid action comedy.

Name : Andrew O'Hehir / Alias : Salon.com
Bungled rather than flat-out terrible.

Name : Michael Phillips / Alias : Chicago Tribune
Haven't we seen the oh-my-gosh-my-spouse-is-secretly-an-assassin-but-you-know-a-nice-one routine once too often?

Name : Frank Scheck / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
The audience is the real victim.

Name : Stephen Cole / Alias : Globe and Mail
Maybe filmmakers should shoot what Ashton's up to off-camera, because not many laughs are making it to the screen.