Movie Reviews: The Host, G.I. Joe, Tyler Perry's Temptation

Editor's Note: All reviews and information aggregated from Moviefone and RottenTomatoes.

Want to catch a movie this weekend? Here's Patch's roundup of movies playing at the Mann St. Louis Park Cinema 6 and Kerasotes Showplace Icon Theatre at West End:

New Releases

G.I. Joe: Retaliation

One sentence plot: In this sequel, the G.I. Joes are not only fighting their mortal enemy Cobra; they are forced to contend with threats from within the government that jeopardize their very existence.

Rotten Tomatoes viewer score: 69

Rotten Tomatoes critic score: 29

Reviews:

"Good luck recalling any other would-be set pieces a couple of days after you've seen Retaliation." Boston Globe Full Review

"A more sure-footed shoot-'em-up that finds some heart, wit and perhaps enough momentum to spawn a formidable action franchise." USA Today Full Review

"Movies like GI Joe: Retaliation want to give you the video-game equivalent of an itchy trigger-finger. It's an emotion-free zone." Orange County Register Full Review

The Host

One sentence plot: When an unseen enemy threatens mankind by taking over their bodies and erasing their memories, Melanie Stryder (Saoirse Ronan) will risk everything to protect the people she cares most about.

Rotten Tomatoes viewer score: 65

Rotten Tomatoes critic score: 12

Reviews:

"Sci-fi hits the skids as bad melodrama rules, and we get such risible dialogue as, 'It's not really me you like, it's this body' and 'I'm still of two minds.' And how about this groaner: 'Kiss me like you want to get slapped." Toronto Star Full Review

"'The Host' is top-heavy with profound, sonorous conversations, all tending to sound like farewells." Chicago Sun-Times Full Review

"This is pretty silly stuff, Twi-lite if you will, but played with maximum solemnity, no discernible humor and minimal excitement." CNN Full Review

Tyler Perry's Temptation

One sentence plot: Tyler Perry's Temptation' tells the provocative and sensual story of Judith, an ambitious married woman whose obsessive passion for a handsome billionaire leads to betrayal, danger and a choice that will forever alter the course of her life.

Rotten Tomatoes viewer score: 77

Rotten Tomatoes critic score: 12

Reviews:

"The mixed tones don't quite meld; While Smollet-Bell is fine, the broad comedy is so sporadic it feels out of place." New York Daily News Full Review

"This heavy-handed melodrama represents one of Tyler Perry's weakest efforts ever, and that's saying something." Hollywood Reporter Full Review

"A ludicrous marital drama-cum-morality play from contemporary black cinema's most prolific multihyphenate." Variety Full Review

Also in Theaters:

The Croods

One sentence plot: The Croods tells the story of the world's first family road trip: When their cave is destroyed, the Crood family must embark on a comedy adventure into strange and spectacular territory in search of a new home.

Rotten Tomatoes viewer score: 86

Rotten Tomatoes critic score: 65

Reviews:

"Despite a few too many mother-in-law jokes, 'The Croods' nicely makes it clear that even before they had fire, families understood how important it was to cherish and protect each other." Chicago Sun-Times Full Review

"'The Croods' is both brisk and beautiful, and should be sufficiently entertaining for family audiences for whom few such options exist these days." The Associated Press Full Review

"The familiarity of the characters and their dynamics do make the movie feel comfy. You'll probably go into the prehistoric animated comedy thinking you know what it's going to be, and you'll be right." The Pioneer Press Full Review

Admission

One sentence plot: Tina Fey (30 Rock) and Paul Rudd (This is 40) are paired for the first time on-screen in Admission, the new comedy/drama directed by Academy Award nominee Paul Weitz (About a Boy, In Good Company), about the surprising detours we encounter on the road to happiness.

Rotten Tomatoes viewer score: 60

Rotten Tomatoes critic score: 45

Reviews:

"'Admission' has some sublime moments, most of them involving Fey and Rudd dancing around their inevitable romance. The problem is in the foundation." Chicago Sun-Times Full Review

"What should be a hilarious, long-overdue pairing of two hugely likable, superstar comedians ends up being a major disappointment with 'Admission.'" Associated Press Full Review

"What is most distressing about Admission is that it serves as further evidence that Tina Fey, despite her dominance of the small screen, has not yet mastered the big one." The Atlantic Full Review

Olympus Has Fallen

One sentence plot: When the White House (Secret Service Code: "Olympus") is captured by a terrorist mastermind and the President is kidnapped, disgraced former Presidential guard Mike Banning finds himself trapped within the building.

Rotten Tomatoes viewer score: 79

Rotten Tomatoes critic score: 51

Reviews:

"A typical slab of Hollywood action in which the White House crumbles under attack, the American flag is tattered and tossed aside by baddies, and clichés rise like gods." Los Angeles Times Full Review

"'Olympus Has Fallen' is just too much of a pale 'Die Hard' ripoff." Richard Roeper Full Review

"Olympus Has Fallen wants to be 'Die Hard in the White House' so much I half-expected Alexander Godunov to pop up at the end." Houston Press Full Review

Spring Breakers

One sentence plot: Four college coeds find their Florida spring break taking an unexpectedly violent turn after falling in with a local gangster in this surreal lack comedy from Harmony Korine (Mister Lonely, Trash Humpers).

Rotten Tomatoes viewer score: 67

Rotten Tomatoes critic score: 69

Reviews:

"There are very few movies I regret having wasted my time on or are completely disgusted by. 'Spring Breakers' is the definition of disgusting. The characters had no substance and the storyline had nothing to offer." Entertainment Spectrum Full Review

"A half hour, four hours, two days after walking away from it you might still flashback to its seductive, neon-lit, dayglow world." Detroit News Full Review

"Korine gestures toward social criticism, but essentially this is just an hour and a half of bongs [and] beers... thinly dressed as Natural Born Killers." Chicago Reader Full Review

The Incredible Burt Wonderstone

One sentence plot: Superstar magicians Burt Wonderstone (Steve Carell) and Anton Marvelton (Steve Buscemi) have ruled the Las Vegas strip for years, raking in millions with illusions as big as Burt's growing ego. But lately the duo's greatest deception is their public friendship, while secretly they've grown to loathe each other. 

Rotten Tomatoes viewer score: 98

Rotten Tomatoes critic score: 41

Reviews:

"You watch it thinking that it should be smarter and funnier, but you have a pretty good time anyway." Seattle Times Full Review

"Is this really what the audience wants? A deliriously unhinged setup and larger-than-life characters, abruptly devolving into a mind-numbingly familiar story with a totalitarian happy ending?" Salon.com Full Review

"Welcome back, Hilarious Jim Carrey. We've missed you." Chicago Sun-Times Full Review

The Call

One sentence plot: When veteran 911 operator, Jordan (Halle Berry), takes a life-altering call from a teenage girl (Abigail Breslin) who has just been abducted, she realizes that she must confront a killer from her past in order to save the girl's life.

Rotten Tomatoes viewer score: 71

Rotten Tomatoes critic score: 39

Reviews:

"Let's call The Call what it is: high quality trash that both diminishes and is redeemed by all the talents who have deigned to bring it to life." New York Daily News Full Review

"If you're going to watch a movie in which two people talk on the phone for most of the film, it's not the worst thing in the world for one of the folks involved to have the face of Storm from the X-Men." Entertainment Weekly Full Review

"Shocking, I know, to think the writer of Thir13en Ghosts and Exit Wounds may not have been up to the task of crafting a fully realized narrative." Houston Press Full Review

Jack the Giant Slayer

One sentence plot: 'Jack the Giant Slayer' tells the story of an ancient war that is reignited when a young farmhand unwittingly opens a gateway between our world and a fearsome race of giants.

Rotten Tomatoes viewer score: 95

Rotten Tomatoes critic score: 62

Reviews:

"It's stuck in a big-budget-movie middle ground - not quite thrilling enough to be an action movie, not quite funny enough for a comedy - and, once you've pondered the impressive size of the beanstalk, there's not much else there." Seattle Times Full Review

"The action is a little too intense for very young children. But for everyone else, including cynical grown-up critics who didn't think they'd ever give a Fee, a Fi, a Fo or a Fum about this movie, it's a terrific adventure." Chicago Sun-Times Full Review

"By the time the giants have descended the beanstalk and laid siege to the king's castle, and the boiling oil comes out with the flaming arrows and the flying flaming trees, it's like: Enough already." Chicago Tribune Full Review

Escape from Planet Earth

One sentence plot: The 3D animated family comedy catapults moviegoers to planet Baab where admired astronaut Scorch Supernova (Brendan Fraser) is a national hero to the blue alien population.

Rotten Tomatoes viewer score: 62

Rotten Tomatoes critic score: 26

Reviews:

"Colorful as the 3-D aliens-among-us comedy is to look at, though, Corddry is handed a role that's beige as can be, and so are his castmates." Boston Globe Full Review

"Just like its hero and his grounded starship, Escape From Planet Earth is, for much of the film, a decidedly earthbound adventure." Washington Post Full Review

"A lightweight, warp-speed, brightly colored trifle that should delight small children and sporadically amuse their parents." Variety Full Review

Safe Haven

One sentence plot: A woman starts a new life in a small town in North Carolina and finds herself reluctantly attracted to a man who helps her confront her past in this Nicholas Sparks adaptation from Dear John director Lasse Hallström.

Rotten Tomatoes viewer score: 71

Rotten Tomatoes critic score: 13

Reviews:

"Plods along with dialogue just above the level of crayon scribblings, and the direction by the usually reliable Lasse Hallström is dismayingly sluggish." New York Observer Full Review

"It's as though the filmmakers lacked the confidence to stick with the basic story, which served every element needed in a Sparks-infused guilty pleasure." Dallas Morning News Full Review

"On its own merits, Safe Haven is about as satisfying and filling as a Valentine's Day conversation heart, with far less to say." MSN Movies Full Review

Silver Linings Playbook

One sentence plot: Pat Solatano (Bradley Cooper) has lost everything and finds himself living back with his mother (Jacki Weaver) and father (Robert DeNiro) after spending eight months is a state institution on a plea bargain.

Rotten Tomatoes viewer score: 88

Rotten Tomatoes critic score: 92

Reviews:

"Silver Linings Playbook tells us that happily-ever-after may depend on finding people who coexist with our lunacy, not ones who can lead us out of it. In any case, it's crazy good." Minneapolis Star Tribune Full Review

"A crazy beaut of a comedy that brims with generosity and manages to circumvent predictability at every turn." Entertainment Weekly Full Review

"This meaningful film keeps the laughs, giddy anxiousness and warm butterflies from the trailer and sustains it all through two full hours of a love story." Denver Post Full Review

Side Effects

One sentence plot: Steven Soderbergh reteams with his Contagion screenwriter Scott Z. Burns for this psychological thriller starring Rooney Mara as a woman who turns to drugs in order to deal with her husband (Channing Tatum) being released from jail.

Rotten Tomatoes viewer score: 97

Rotten Tomatoes critic score: 84

Reviews:

"Ultimately, think of the movie as a puzzle box in which all the pieces fit together wonderfully well. Once you step back and take a look at how it’s all put together, you have to marvel at how cleverly constructed the whole thing is." Arizona Republic. Full Review

"Like Magic Mike, Side Effects is enlivened by Soderbergh's jazzy style and laidback moralism, bringing to mind the work of another connoisseur of genre, Robert Altman." Slant Magazine Full Review

"Side Effects is mostly a good Saturday-night movie, but by the end, it's caused a few unintended side effects of its own: a bit of head-scratching, and a giggle or two of disbelief." Entertainment Weekly. Full Review

Identity Thief

One sentence plot: Jason Bateman and Melissa McCarthy lead the cast of 'Identity Thief', an all-star comedy in which a regular guy is forced to extreme measures to clear his name.

Rotten Tomatoes viewer score: 97

Rotten Tomatoes critic score: 29

Reviews:

"The only thing Identity Thief steals is your time and your expectation of inventive comedy. The concept may be high, but the yield (in terms of laughs) is depressingly low." Huffington Post. Full review

"Gordon is lost, and his style of shooting - telescopic close-ups, which never give us enough space to appreciate the performers - feels wrong for comedy." Chicago Tribune. Full Review

"Of the many qualities I adore about Melissa McCarthy as a comedian and as a dramatic actor, the best is how fully she gives herself to every character she plays." Entertainment Weekly. Full Review

Zero Dark Thirty

One sentence plot: The filmmaking duo behind The Hurt Locker (Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal) takes on the hunt for -- and the killing of -- Osama bin Laden in this Annapurna Pictures production that tracks SEAL Team Six, the special-ops team who eventually brought down the terrorist leader.

Moviefone viewer score: 63
Moviefone critic score: 95

Reviews:
“Telling a nearly three-hour story with an ending everyone knows, Bigelow and Boal have managed to craft one of the most intense and intellectually challenging films of the year.” The Guardian Full Review.

“Like the fictional Clarice Starling in ‘The Silence of the Lambs,’ Maya is a consummate professional who brilliantly performs her job in an often hostile work environment.” New York Post Full Review.

“A monumental achievement that documents a coordinated and complicated response to a monumental tragedy.” Philadelphia Enquirer Full Review.

Do you plan on seeing any of these movies? Have you seen them already? Leave a review of the films with a comment below.

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