Name : Christy Lemire / Alias : Associated Press
Notable for a chilling lead performance from Rebecca De Mornay and not much else.

Name : Jon Frosch / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
A movie not even a mother could love.

Name : Jeannette Catsoulis / Alias : New York Times
Stuffed with secrets and characters who can't wait to betray one another, the film offers no one to root for except Mother, whose perverted family values at least remain consistent.

Name : Robert Abele / Alias : Los Angeles Times
The ready crackle of [De Mornay's] studiously demonic performance brings welcome distraction from this otherwise crude litany of torture and wretched death.

Name : Alonso Duralde / Alias : TheWrap
Too innocuous to inspire actual rage yet too utterly tepid and bland to elicit a single laugh.

Name : Peter Keough / Alias : Boston Globe
It's like a nightmare in which you are trapped in an endless Kmart aisle of horrible holiday cards.

Name : Joe Morgenstern / Alias : Wall Street Journal
You can survive this comedy, which was directed by Garry Marshall and written by too many people to shame by naming, but only if you're immune to febrile calculation complicated by chronic ineptitude.

Name : Jen Chaney / Alias : Washington Post
When Aniston's character casually mentions Groundhog Day and Flag Day in conversation, I immediately thought to myself, "Be quiet, you, or Garry Marshall will get even more bad ideas."

Name : Nick Pinkerton / Alias : Village Voice
Mother's Day is distinguished, at least, by De Mornay's porcelain-smile lampoon of castigating matriarchy.

Name : Moira MacDonald / Alias : Seattle Times
A two-hour movie so forgettable that I'm not convinced it actually exists.

Name : Sara Stewart / Alias : New York Post
The cinematic equivalent of a paper plate with macaroni and glitter haphazardly glued onto it, "Mother's Day" is a film only its creators could love (and even they must be having some misgivings).

Name : Glenn Kenny / Alias : New York Times
There are laughs, albeit inadvertent; the biggest comes courtesy of the production's no-doubt overworked sound department, when Ms. Robertson utters "I have abandonment issues" without moving her mouth.

Name : Molly Eichel / Alias : Philadelphia Inquirer
The problem with this type of movie is ingrained in the structure: There's so much going on that there's no time to build characters that make sense or any sort of meaningful relationships.

Name : Andrew Barker / Alias : Variety
Atrociously written, begrudgingly acted, haphazardly assembled and never more backward than when it thinks it's being progressive .

Name : Trevor Johnston / Alias : Time Out
Excruciatingly misguided.

Name : Richard Roeper / Alias : Chicago Sun-Times
Like just about everything else in Mother's Day, the nod to the earlier movies are clumsy and pointless and obvious.

Name : Jim Slotek / Alias : Toronto Sun
Mother's Day seems more like a contractual commitment than a creative exercise.

Name : Randy Cordova / Alias : Arizona Republic
Sure, you'll forget all about it a week after you've seen it, but it's mostly pleasant and occasionally touching, even though it's a lot closer to an episode of "The Love Boat" than "Love Actually."

Name : Charles Gant / Alias : Variety
Undistinguished apart from Rebecca De Mornay's performance as an unhinged mama.

Name : Moira MacDonald / Alias : Seattle Times
This stranger-in-a-strange-land mood piece has an appealingly serene pace.

Name : Keith Uhlich / Alias : AV Club
A Hologram For The King is a 97-minute movie that feels like it was cut down from two-hours-plus, with whole subplots reduced or jettisoned in what was likely an arduous post-production period.

Name : Rafer Guzman / Alias : Newsday
An earnest but aimless-feeling adaptation of Dave Eggers' novel.

Name : Jim Slotek / Alias : Toronto Sun
A "Death of a Salesman" for the out-sourcing era, A Hologram for the King makes full use of Tom Hanks' default note, an everyman struggling painfully against the tide.

Name : Chris Nashawaty / Alias : Entertainment Weekly
If it sounds like Hologram is basically about a middle-aged white guy getting his groove back in the Middle East, well, yes, it is that. But if you squint hard enough, it's also a little bit more.

Name : Mick LaSalle / Alias : San Francisco Chronicle
It's a strange thing: A Hologram for the King is mostly about a series of nuisances, annoyances and stresses, and yet it's a pleasure from beginning to end.

Name : Matthew Lickona / Alias : San Diego Reader
Director Tom Tykwer (Cloud Atlas), who also adapted the screenplay from Dave Eggers novel, displays a fine eye and a light touch with cultural detail, and isn't nearly as harsh on his hero as he might have (ought to have?) been.

Name : Calvin Wilson / Alias : St. Louis Post-Dispatch
It's true that not much happens - except cinema at its finest.

Name : Kate Taylor / Alias : Globe and Mail
You have to wonder what this film would feel like if a darker figure, a Robert Downey Jr. or Edward Norton, for example, had been cast in the lead role.

Name : Sheri Linden / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
The focus on the way individuals adapt to and defy custom is one of the smartest aspects of the film.

Name : Kenneth Turan / Alias : Los Angeles Times
The problem is not that anything on screen is troubling, it's that nothing there, not even star Tom Hanks, is capable of holding our interest or attention for very long.

Name : Colin Covert / Alias : Minneapolis Star Tribune
It's not entirely free of stereotypes or sentimental moments. What it is, though, is amazingly likable.

Name : Michael Nordine / Alias : TheWrap
Even when A Hologram for a King rests on shaky narrative ground (which is often), Tykwer's confidently frenetic presentation and a host of surreal grace notes lend it a sense of urgency that keeps us on our toes, if not the edge of our seats.

Name : Kyle Smith / Alias : New York Post
To describe this as a movie about a mediocre businessman biding his time before an appointment probably makes it sound more exciting than it is.

Name : Nick Allen / Alias : RogerEbert.com
Here's a reasonably-sized star vehicle that finds exciting purpose in presenting an existential crisis.

Name : Tom Russo / Alias : Boston Globe
It's like an international-relations microcosm imagined by the Coen brothers, down to an occasional sense that the absurdity isn't taking us anywhere.

Name : Ann Hornaday / Alias : Washington Post
It's that rare fish-out-of-water story in which the fish miraculously manages to stop needing water, and learns to crave air instead.

Name : Tom Huddleston / Alias : Time Out
It's hard to imagine a more Tom Hanks-y setup than this.

Name : Bilge Ebiri / Alias : Village Voice
It may start with a big burst of energy, but this is a sad, somber film about a world that's slowly, knowingly losing touch with the real.

Name : Tony Hicks / Alias : San Jose Mercury News
"A Hologram for the King" is disappointing mostly in that it could have been been better. But that doesn't make it bad.

Name : Peter Rainer / Alias : Christian Science Monitor
It's a sweet, deliberately meandering movie, and it took me a while to connect with it. But it won me over because ultimately it conveys so well that feeling of estrangement that is both terrifying and comic for any farflung traveler.

Name : J. R. Jones / Alias : Chicago Reader
I guess I'll have to read the Dave Eggers novel to figure out what this thing is about.

Name : Stephen Holden / Alias : New York Times
It takes an actor with the finesse of Tom Hanks to turn a story of confusion, perplexity, frustration and panic into an agreeably uncomfortable comedy.

Name : Steven Rea / Alias : Philadelphia Inquirer
Quiet existential irony, albeit diluted and distorted, still reverberates in this stranger-in-a-strange-land story.

Name : Rex Reed / Alias : New York Observer
It looks expensive and comes off bland.

Name : Justin Chang / Alias : Variety
The movie conjures no shortage of potent images, but push a bit deeper and your fist closes on empty air.

Name : Michael Phillips / Alias : Chicago Tribune
The tone and rhythms are pushy, forced, strained, like the expression on Hanks' face. What should be casual punctuation, filmed in medium shot, ends up in bam-pow close-ups.

Name : Joe Morgenstern / Alias : Wall Street Journal
Here's a case of consistently miscalibrated tone, from the first clumsy stabs at humor to the hero's default expression, which is painfully pained.

Name : Adam Graham / Alias : Detroit News
You always trust Hanks, and he makes this "Hologram" feel real.

Name : Stephen Whitty / Alias : Newark Star-Ledger
This film is surprisingly sweet.

Name : Eric Kohn / Alias : indieWIRE
It's Eggers minus Eggers - a whimsical tale that aspires to make its whimsy count for something deep.

Name : Cary Darling / Alias : Fort Worth Star-Telegram/DFW.com
Starring Tom Hanks and directed and written by Tom Tykwer ( Cloud Atlas, Run Lola Run), it veers from dark comedy to drama to buddy movie to romance without being particularly successful at any of them.

Name : Peter Travers / Alias : Rolling Stone
Not even the mighty Tom Hanks can save this scattershot adaptation of Dave Eggers' lost-soul novel

Name : Richard Roeper / Alias : Chicago Sun-Times
Writer-director Tykwer skillfully presents a series of fantastical scenes in a way that has us thinking: Sure, that could happen. This is quite simply a beautiful film to behold.

Name : Peter Howell / Alias : Toronto Star
Tom Hanks exerts such a gravitational force in his movies, sometimes to his detriment, it's fascinating to watch him struggle for equilibrium in Tom Tykwer's A Hologram for the King.

Name : Ethan Sacks / Alias : New York Daily News
After a first act that seems to promise a biting comedy, the film gets lost in the desert - literally and figuratively.