Masterminds | Rotten Tomatoes

Masterminds

PG-13

Released Sep 30, 2016

1h 35m

Comedy

Action

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Masterminds: Trailer 1

2:14

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34%

Tomatometer

100 Reviews

35%

Audience Score

25,000+ Ratings

An armored-car driver (Zach Galifianakis) helps a flirty co-worker (Kristen Wiig) and her friends pull off a heist, then finds himself holding the bag after they double-cross him.

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Critics Consensus

Masterminds' great cast and stranger-than-fiction true story are largely wasted on a scattershot comedy with a handful of funny moments and far too much wackiness.

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Steve Davis

Austin Chronicle

Galifianakis' cluelessness can tickle, but he's having a progressively difficult time making things feel fresh.

Rated: 2/5

Oct 6, 2016

Full Review

Matthew Lickona

San Diego Reader

It's just smart people acting like dumb people in a dumb movie.

Rated: 0/5

Oct 5, 2016

Full Review

Jordan Hoffman

Guardian

A tooth extraction without painkillers would have been far more enjoyable.

Rated: 1/5

Oct 1, 2016

Full Review

Matt Brunson

Film Frenzy

Nobody would ever mistake Masterminds for a good movie ... but it would be criminal to deny the huge laughs strewn throughout, sneakily exploding like depth charges at random intervals.

Rated: 2.5/4

Aug 18, 2021

Full Review

Mike Massie

Gone With The Twins

It's a rather surprising, amusing mix of playful goofiness and crass grotesqueries.

Rated: 6/10

Dec 5, 2020

Full Review

Ricardo Gallegos

Pólvora

The film is plagued with bad jokes that are trying way too hard to make you laugh. [Full review in Spanish]

Jun 28, 2020

Full Review

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Richard M

Ducks in a row bring us closer to death, of a… …Alrigh, alrigh… To Kill A Mockingbird..but the soundtrack.

Rated 5 out of 5 stars

05/09/24

Full Review

Nitrox x

Funny, but extremely cheesy.

Rated 3 out of 5 stars

12/19/23

Full Review

Andy J

This movie is hysterical. The jokes are nuanced at times. The funniest movie I've seen in a long time. Can't believe it is panned by so many. Ted Lasso as an assassin is worth it on its own.

Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars

10/01/23

Full Review

Allysa W

Really f*cking funny. Sometimes comedies can be too much for people on their first viewing. I have a feeling this will grow on people with repeat viewings, just like Anchorman and Talledega Nights did.

Rated 4 out of 5 stars

09/05/23

Full Review

Ola G

In March 1997, after Loomis Fargo & Company has been robbed of $18.8 million in Jacksonville by company security guard Philip Noel Johnson, Steve Eugene Chambers (Owen Wilson) and Kelly Campbell (Kristen Wiig), a former employee of Loomis. They involve Loomis armored car driver David Scott Ghantt (Zach Galifianakis). After some awkward training in preparation for the robbery, the team has David go inside Loomis' vault and load the entire money supply into the company's van. Before he leaves, he takes out three CCTV tapes, but misses one. The next day, he flees to Mexico with $20,000 and takes the cover name "Michael McKinney", the name of a friend of Steve's. Meanwhile, Steve takes most of the heist, around $17 million. FBI Special Agent Scanlon and her partner identify David as the prime suspect, but have no idea of Steve's involvement. Steve plans to tell the FBI where David is, but Kelly thinks it would be wrong to abandon him. In Mexico, David narrowly evades three Interpol agents looking for him, and calls Kelly about what happened. He inadvertently learns Steve's name from the ID in a wallet Kelly gave him. With his cover blown, Steve hires his hitman friend Michael McKinney (Jason Sudeikis) to hunt David down. Michael finds David and attempts to shoot him, but the gun backfires and David escapes... Rotten Tomatoes critical consensus reads, "Mastermind's great cast and stranger-than-fiction true story are largely wasted on a scattershot comedy with a handful of funny moments and far too much wackiness." Peter Travers of Rolling Stone magazine gave the film one-and-a-half out of four stars, mainly criticizing its lack of good jokes: "The laughs evaporate almost as soon as they land, and some (make that most) of them don't land at all.... Masterminds owes us our two hours back." On the other hand, Matt Zoller Seitz of RogerEbert.com gave the film three out of four stars, stating that "If smart dumb comedies hold a place in your heart, you'll like 'Masterminds.'" Although he acknowledged the film's weakness in its length, structure, and pacing, he emphasized that "Most of the time in these kinds of films the notes of sweetness, naivete and regret feel forced.... Here, though, you believe the sweetness, because Hess and his cast sell it with poker faces." Richard Brody of The New Yorker also gave praise to the film, writing that "Yes, the comedy is funny—even when it's not laugh-out-loud funny, it's sparklingly inventive and charmingly loopy—but, above all, it has the religious intensity and spiritual resonance that marks all of Hess's other films, and it extends his world of ideas into wild new realms, extends his vision into darker corners of existence than he had formerly contemplated." He also observed the filmmaking of Hess as "suggest[ing] a kinship with the transcendental cinema of Robert Bresson and Carl Theodor Dreyer.... his images belong to a similar realm of astonishment, even if his are frankly comedic where theirs are irreconcilably tragic." (Via Wikipedia) This stranger-than-fiction true story based on the Loomis Fargo robbery is just wasted as the set up is over the top and all over the place with Galifianakis & Co leading the way into an oblivion of stupid silliness.

Rated 2 out of 5 stars

07/19/23

Full Review

Eric R

It's not the best movie in the world or anything, but it was actually hilarious. And it was quite surprising that it was a true story haha. Also, totally a great cast.

Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars

06/16/23

Full Review

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Jared Hess

Director

Zach Galifianakis

David Ghantt

Owen Wilson

Steve Chambers

Kristen Wiig

Kelly Campbell

Ross Kimball

Eric Payne

Devin Ratray

Runny

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Masterminds: Trailer 1

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Synopsis

An armored-car driver (Zach Galifianakis) helps a flirty co-worker (Kristen Wiig) and her friends pull off a heist, then finds himself holding the bag after they double-cross him.

Director: Jared Hess
Producer: Ryan Kavanaugh, Dana Brunetti, Kevin J. Messick, Jody Hill, Danny McBride, Erin David, Joseph Nicholas, Jerry Lasky, Tucker Tooley, Jill Sobel Messick, Adam Fields, Andrew Panay, Kenneth L. Halsband, Brent Almond
Screenwriter: Chris Bowman, Hubbel Palmer, Emily Spivey
Distributor: Relativity Media
Production Co: Relativity Studios, Michaels/Goldwyn
Rating: PG-13 (Some Language|Crude and Sexual Humor|Violence)
Genre: Comedy, Action
Original Language: English
Release Date (Theaters): Sep 30, 2016, Wide
Release Date (Streaming): Jan 13, 2017
Box Office (Gross USA): $17.3M
Runtime: 1h 35m
Aspect Ratio: Flat (1.85:1)

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