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So-so
Avg. Critic Score: 45 out of 100 Mixed or average reviews Metascore® based on all critic reviews
Information for Parents:
13 Iffy for 13+
Read Common Sense Media review

Critic scores range from 0 to 100, with higher scores indicating more favorable reviews.

  • 83
    Entertainment Weekly | Owen Gleiberman

    A blithe, funny, and engaging movie. Read full review

  • 75
    San Francisco Chronicle | Mick LaSalle

    The rare case of a movie that gets better as it goes along. Read full review

  • 75
    Chicago Sun-Times | Roger Ebert

    The movie is more slapdash than smooth, more impulsive than calculating, and it takes cheap shots. I responded to its savage, sloppy zeal. Read full review

  • 75
    USA Today | Claudia Puig

    Not as incisive a political commentary as "Thank You For Smoking," American Dreamz lampoons the public's appetite for mindless entertainment and easy distraction from serious concerns. Read full review

  • 70
    Los Angeles Times | Carina Chocano

    Grant's second coming as a rake and an egotist is the best thing to happen to his career since "Four Weddings and a Funeral." He is twice as enjoyable as the preening bad guy as he was as the bumbling good guy, and Weitz makes perfect use of the new persona. Read full review

  • 50
    The Hollywood Reporter |

    A film with none of the heart that has characterized Weitz's best work and none of the freshness of his most successful. Read full review

  • 40
    Variety | Robert Koehler

    Combining a gallery of targets including President Bush, "American Idol," the Iraq War and the overarching theme of a nation of citizens held in the thrall of phony dreams, pic and its ambitions are undermined by insistent cartoonishness and comic ineptitude. Read full review

  • 30
    Wall Street Journal | Joe Morgenstern

    The movie stands as a genuine offense against the venerable and indispensable institution of satire. Read full review

  • 30
    Washington Post | Desson Thomson

    Weitz co-directed the wonderful "About a Boy" in 2002, but in "Dreamz" -- a tediously facile satire -- his comic instincts fail him. Read full review

  • 30
    The New York Times | Manohla Dargis

    The jokes don't just fizzle into insignificance; they flop about with gaudy ineffectualness, gasping for air like newly landed trout. Read full review

View more reviews for American Dreamz on Metacritic

Information for Parents
Common Sense Media says Iffy for 13+ Social satire more for teens and adults.
What Parents Need to Know Parents need to know that this satire pokes fun at President Bush, American Idol, and Western fears of terrorism (the would-be presidential assassins here are "Arabic" and comic). The film makes the TV show and the presidential administration look equally dishonest. A character cheats on her fiancé. Characters make fun of "white trash." Terrorists carry and fire guns, and plan a suicide bombing; one terrorist says he enjoys torturing people; another character blows himself up to protest his girlfriend's betrayal (you don't see explosion or deaths). In Iraq, a character is barely shot (grazed) and sent home on his first day. Characters drink beer and wine, and the First Lady takes pills for depression.
  • Families can talk about the function of satire. How can making fun of something provide critique or even suggest ways to change? How do this movie's particular parodies touch on broader themes, such as corruption, commercialism, cynicism? Does it matter that American Idol might be fixed, if it is designed to be entertainment?
The good stuff
  • message true0 Positive messages: U.S. president appears to be dumb, depressed, and easily manipulated; cynical producers and bored host of TV show regularly rig the game.
What to watch for
  • violence false3 Violence: Terrorists appear in a training video (learning to shoot); a terrorist breaks someone's arm; terrorists plan a suicide bombing; a U.S. soldier in Iraq is shot in the arm and sent home with his arm in a sling; an explosion ends the film, but you don't see it or any bodily effects, only learn that characters have been killed.
  • sex false3 Sex: Couples kiss (Sally and William, and then, Sally and Martin -- they go on to have sex in her dressing room, offscreen, though witnessed by William); Omer is called "Omersexual" some song lyrics refer to sexual activity (including "Superfreak" and a made-up song, "Let's get raunchy tonight"); Iqbar is stereotypically gay.
  • language false3 Language: Pushing it for a PG-13: 3 f-words, plus a couple of s-words, "hell," "bitch," "ass," "damn," slang for sex.
  • consumerism false3 Consumerism: American Idol is an obvious reference throughout; Osmonds record; Coal Miner's Daughter movie poster; Ferrari; Kangol; Pepsi.
  • drugsalcoholtobacco false3 Drinking, drugs and smoking: Unlit cigar; beer and wine-drinking (some as background, in a bar); references to the First Lady's "happy pills," which she has her husband take as well (presumably, a mood-elevating prescription).
An independent nonprofit dedicated to providing families the information they need to help kids thrive in a world of media and technology. © Common Sense Media Inc. 2010. All rights reserved.

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American Dreamz Movie Ratings + Reviews

Fans say

So-so 125 fan reviews

Critics say

So-so See all critic reviews

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