Name : Nick Schager / Alias : Variety
This pious drama is a work of minimal imagination and even less subtlety.

Name : Christian Holub / Alias : Entertainment Weekly
The Young Messiah struggles to hold its audience's attention.

Name : Christy Lemire / Alias : RogerEbert.com
We know how the story ends, so there's little in the way of tension.

Name : Andy Webster / Alias : New York Times
"The Young Messiah" performs no miracles.

Name : Keith Uhlich / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
This uninspiring, borderline inept spiritual drama about the Son of God's formative years preaches to the choir.

Name : Dave White / Alias : TheWrap
Perhaps realizing that enticing nonbelievers into another movie about the life of Christ may necessitate the wild-style of a director like Darren Aronofsky, the filmmakers decided to play it safe rather than risk conservative Evangelical rejection.

Name : Noel Murray / Alias : Los Angeles Times
At times, this movie feels too much like the Christian version of "The Phantom Menace," offering unnecessary explanations for well-known stories.

Name : Sandy Cohen / Alias : Associated Press
With Damon's charm center stage, Scott has crafted an exciting, hopeful story about humanity at its best: The brightest minds working together for a common goal that bridges international borders and forges a feeling of unity.

Name : Stephen Whitty / Alias : Newark Star-Ledger
There is a lot here to delight audiences of many kinds.

Name : Chris Vognar / Alias : Dallas Morning News
The Martian is fueled by charm, curiosity and the scientific method. It plays like a modernized Kennedy-age fantasy of discovery, space and can-do initiative.

Name : Rene Rodriguez / Alias : Miami Herald
The Martian does look like it was shot on Mars, even though the film's tone is suspiciously light and cheerful for Scott, who tends to thrive on a chillier, more dour habitat. But who can bemoan this great filmmaker a crowd-pleaser?

Name : David Edelstein / Alias : New York Magazine/Vulture
Cynical as I am about how monster-budget blockbusters have come to dominate the studio mind-set, I can't imagine anyone not liking this one.

Name : J. R. Jones / Alias : Chicago Reader
3-D conveys the frightening depth of space, but the suspense machinery crowds out all but the most banal philosophizing.

Name : Tony Hicks / Alias : San Jose Mercury News
Watney could be the perfect character for Damon, who easily slides into the persona of a man who's relentless, optimistic, intelligent, sarcastic, self-effacing, and inspirational.

Name : Chris Nashawaty / Alias : Entertainment Weekly
Scott's sci-fi adventure is the kind of film you leave the theater itching to tell your friends to see.

Name : Peter Debruge / Alias : Variety
"The Martian" should do far more than just make Fox a ton of money; it could conceivably rekindle interest in the space program and inspire a new generation of future astronauts.

Name : Rafer Guzman / Alias : Newsday
You'll root for Damon as a resourceful science whiz, but the movie's total absence of plot results in a narrative vacuum.

Name : Barry Hertz / Alias : Globe and Mail
Hell, I'm scared of simply sleeping outdoors and I walked out of the movie with just the tiniest daydream of strapping myself into a rocket and shooting for the stars (ideally with Matt Damon as my co-pilot).

Name : Todd McCarthy / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
Damon provides comfortable company during the long stretches when he's onscreen alone, and the actor's physicality makes Mark's capability entirely credible.

Name : James Berardinelli / Alias : ReelViews
This is science fiction for sophisticated audiences and, as such, a fulfilling and satisfying experience.

Name : Bruce Kirkland / Alias : Toronto Sun
Like Alfonso Cuaron's wonderful close-space thriller Gravity, Scott's The Martian is all the more interesting because it is linked with possibilities and even probabilities.

Name : Peter Rainer / Alias : Christian Science Monitor
The Martian plays to both Scott's strengths and weaknesses. By relegating Mark's predicament to a purely survivalist scenario, he keeps things humming along without ever widening the horizon. But there was an obligation to widen the horizon.

Name : Christopher Orr / Alias : The Atlantic
The film is a profound testament to the rare-and underrated-virtue of simply not screwing anything up.

Name : Cary Darling / Alias : Fort Worth Star-Telegram/DFW.com
This marks a solid return to form for Scott, whose last few films ( Exodus: Gods and Kings, The Counselor and Prometheus) have veered from the leaden to the unwatchable. Scott may have found himself by getting lost in space.

Name : Rex Reed / Alias : New York Observer
The Martian is a science fiction popcorn movie that is destined to be a genuine crowd pleaser.

Name : Bill Goodykoontz / Alias : Arizona Republic
Damon is terrific. But this is by no means a one-man show.

Name : Adam Graham / Alias : Detroit News
Turns out getting stranded on Mars can lead to a whole lot of fun.

Name : Kenneth Turan / Alias : Los Angeles Times
Damon is as likable an American actor as we have and ideally cast to convey the pleasing self-confidence and intrepid sense of humor that characterized Watney in the book.

Name : Ann Hornaday / Alias : Washington Post
The problem-solving valorized in "The Martian" provides a simultaneously stirring and spirited example of how cool science can be. As NASA-Hollywood plots go, this one is worth lapping up like all the water on Mars.

Name : Steven Rea / Alias : Philadelphia Inquirer
The Martian is stirring and powerful, boasting a commanding performance from Damon.

Name : Peter Travers / Alias : Rolling Stone
Ridley Scott rediscovers his light touch in a space epic that's fun to geek out at. Damon - a fine actor with the magnetism you only find in a true movie star - keeps you glued.

Name : Gail Pennington / Alias : St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Don't let seeing the movie stop you from reading the book.

Name : Joshua Rothkopf / Alias : Time Out
Bringing optimism, nerd-itude and a touch of crazy to his character's solo ordeal - at one point, scraggly Watney calls himself a "space pirate" - Damon is the key to the movie's exuberance.

Name : Andrew O'Hehir / Alias : Salon.com
A tremendously exciting popcorn spectacle, and also a portrait of extraplanetary survival convincing enough that it had my tech-obsessed 11-year-old companion on his feet cheering on several occasions.

Name : Colin Covert / Alias : Minneapolis Star Tribune
It's a big-hearted mash note to science nerds, optimism, grit and guts. With wonderful dramatic pacing, acting, subject matter, Abba soundtrack anthems and "Lord of the Rings" jokes, "The Martian" is a clever feel-good movie on an epic scale.

Name : Peter Howell / Alias : Toronto Star
It's one of the year's best movies and widescreen 3D experiences, a crackerjack adventure that celebrates human ingenuity over mechanical contrivance.

Name : Stephanie Zacharek / Alias : Village Voice
As elaborate and expensive-looking as The Martian is, it's almost totally lacking in poetry.

Name : Brian Truitt / Alias : USA Today
Damon totally sells what is arguably his most likable role in years with a balance of charming personality and compelling need to cheer hard for this guy.

Name : Mick LaSalle / Alias : San Francisco Chronicle
By the finish, the science discussions have become impenetrable, the musical sequences are coming fast and furious, and every bit of action that should take five minutes takes 15.

Name : Dana Stevens / Alias : Slate
The animating humanism of Scott's film is irreducible. It's a wry tribute to the qualities that got our species into space in the first place: our resourcefulness, our curiosity and our outsized, ridiculous, beautiful brains.

Name : Lou Lumenick / Alias : New York Post
The best thing that either Matt Damon and director Ridley Scott have done in years.

Name : Manohla Dargis / Alias : New York Times
What makes this epic personal is Mr. Scott's filmmaking, in which every soaring aerial shot of the red planet is answered by the intimate landscape of a face.

Name : Alonso Duralde / Alias : TheWrap
Not only does the film stress the importance of using math and physics to solve problems, but it also makes a plot based on scientific inquiry as exciting and unpredictable as the kind that involves punching everyone and then blowing everything up.

Name : Richard Roeper / Alias : Chicago Sun-Times
Damon is terrific. The movie lives and breathes on his performance, and he comes through in every scene.

Name : Michael Phillips / Alias : Chicago Tribune
Those who prefer their science fiction more dour, and dire, may resist the film's fuzzy humanist impulse. I found it refreshing and sincere.

Name : Chris Klimek / Alias : NPR
Even adjusting for flattery, it's an easy film to love - one so suspenseful and funny and just richly, consistently good you might get mad at it falling a few astronomical units short of great.

Name : Mike D'Angelo / Alias : AV Club
At its heart, The Martian is an unapologetically stirring celebration of our ability, as a species, to solve even the most daunting problems via rational thought, step by step by step.

Name : Alex Pappademas / Alias : Grantland
It's a brisk, funny piece of competence-porn sci-fi.

Name : Joe Morgenstern / Alias : Wall Street Journal
What's so stirring about the film is that, before and after everything else, it truly is about being human.

Name : Ty Burr / Alias : Boston Globe
The movie's a valentine to creative collaboration as well as an example of it. It's enough to make you almost grateful.