Name : J. R. Jones / Alias : Chicago Reader
This is the first Fontaine movie I've seen that qualifies as lightweight.

Name : Mark Jenkins / Alias : NPR
Christophe Beaucarne shoots the countryside, the baked goods, Gemma and Martin's playful dogs, and of course Arterton with sun-dappled rapture. No 19th-century novelist saw the world like this.

Name : Kyle Smith / Alias : New York Post
Laden with witty ironies, the film by Anne Fontaine suggests men may not play exactly the roles they think they do in women's lives.

Name : Bilge Ebiri / Alias : New York Magazine/Vulture
After a while, the film feels more like a cute conceit that hasn't really been developed further. It's intriguing, and very well-acted, but empty.

Name : Rafer Guzman / Alias : Newsday
The novel, of course, is one of the towering achievements in literature, and this trivial movie has no idea what to do with it.

Name : Joe Morgenstern / Alias : Wall Street Journal
The whole contrivance falls flat in the end.

Name : Joe Neumaier / Alias : New York Daily News
Literary obsession proves to be a weak spine for this wry French drama.

Name : Jay Weissberg / Alias : Variety
The script flattens the main characters and makes one nostalgic for Flaubert's observational acumen.

Name : Alan Scherstuhl / Alias : Village Voice
Anne Fontaine's Flaubert-inspired meta-pleasure Gemma Bovery takes as its subject the act of watching the lives around us - and of wishing those lives were literature.

Name : Stephen Holden / Alias : New York Times
Think of "Gemma Bovery" as an airy puff pastry, dripping with honey.

Name : Mick LaSalle / Alias : San Francisco Chronicle
Like Chabrol, Fontaine has a way of making you laugh, on an off, for 90 minutes, before leaving you feeling a little queasy from too much truth.

Name : Anthony Lane / Alias : New Yorker
We are offered a handful of sketchy observations on the extent to which art either does or does not mimic life. These are, at best, unchallenging, and would have drawn barks of laughter from the derisive Flaubert.

Name : Jesse Hassenger / Alias : AV Club
Arterton proves again that she has starrier magnetism in movies that slow down enough to appreciate it, even if she winds up as much a symbol as her own person.

Name : Nathalie Atkinson / Alias : Globe and Mail
A transmogrified Flaubert, recast, upturned and rich with observational and satirical contemporary details.

Name : Sheri Linden / Alias : Los Angeles Times
Fans of "Madame Bovary" might enjoy the chance to nod knowingly at references to the novel, but that's not enough to sustain a feature .

Name : Rex Reed / Alias : New York Observer
A somewhat reserved but sensual and gratifying movie that finds and polishes connections between literature and the screen while further catapulting the wonderful British actress Gemma Arterton several notches up the ladder toward international stardom.

Name : Moira MacDonald / Alias : Seattle Times
The scenery's lovely and the bread-kneading surprisingly erotic.

Name : Stephanie Merry / Alias : Washington Post
How is it possible that such blatant male wish fulfillment came from a female director and a graphic novel by a woman, writer-artist Posy Simmonds?

Name : Alonso Duralde / Alias : TheWrap
Underscores the notion that what we're watching isn't merely the life of a complicated woman, but rather the actions and choices of that woman as seen through a man's eyes and a man's judgment.

Name : Jordan Mintzer / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
As pure entertainment it certainly does the job, although much of the text's existential weight is lost in the process.

Name : James Berardinelli / Alias : ReelViews
A nice little gem for anyone intrigued by the concept of having fun with a giant of 19th century literature.

Name : Linda Barnard / Alias : Toronto Star
A tad too slapstick and not nearly modern enough in its social sensibilities to offer a truly updated version of Madame Bovary, Gemma Bovery still has its charms .

Name : Stephen Farber / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
The filmmakers' unsubtle style is responsible for killing many of the jokes. But they do succeed with several of the performers.

Name : Karina Longworth / Alias : Village Voice
The psychedelic nightmare sequence alone is a solid testament to Clark's singular aesthetic.

Name : Lindsey Bahr / Alias : Associated Press
Vacation is an over-the-top, often hilarious homage to the original from the earnest and talented writing-directing team of John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein.

Name : Joe Neumaier / Alias : New York Daily News
Everyone deserves a vacation. And everyone deserves a better comedy than "Vacation."

Name : Bilge Ebiri / Alias : New York Magazine/Vulture
Vacation is lazy, idiotic, and gross - and I laughed my ass off at it.

Name : Calum Marsh / Alias : Globe and Mail
There's so much dead air in the film that I wondered whether punchlines had been cleaved out to secure a PG-13 rating, but no: it's a hard, inexplicable R.

Name : Mick LaSalle / Alias : San Francisco Chronicle
"Vacation" is consistently funny from beginning to end, a piling on of dumb but inventive jokes and excruciating, awkward situations.

Name : Jesse Hassenger / Alias : AV Club
Whenever Daley and Goldstein have the opportunity to make any biting observations or mount sustained original gags, they floor it in the opposite direction.

Name : Ty Burr / Alias : Boston Globe
It holds on to the original's acrid cynicism for the first 40 minutes or so before turning predictable and bland. There are some real, nasty laughs to be had here, but they're front-loaded.

Name : Molly Eichel / Alias : Philadelphia Inquirer
There's nothing to say that crass can't be funny - and it sometimes is in Daley and Goldstein's iteration - but Vacation loses any of the ooey-gooey, family-friendly heart that made you really want Clark to get to Walley World to begin with.

Name : Scott Tobias / Alias : NPR
It's as if Daley and Goldstein started with a list of disgusting topics - outre sex acts, human waste, pubic hair, projectile vomiting, cow cannibalism, et al. - and constructed a narrative around them.

Name : J. R. Jones / Alias : Chicago Reader
Respectably funny.

Name : Lou Lumenick / Alias : New York Post
That sound you hear is John Hughes and Harold Ramis, the writer and director of the original, rolling over in their graves. And not from laughter, which is in very short supply here.

Name : Adam Graham / Alias : Detroit News
Helms' Griswold is a dangerous, moronic maniac, and the filmmakers' disdain for him rubs off on the audience.

Name : Michael Phillips / Alias : Chicago Tribune
If any of this was surprising or cleverly timed, you'd laugh and then cringe. In "Vacation" you cringe first and ask questions later.

Name : Peter Travers / Alias : Rolling Stone
Raucous R-rated fun? You'd think, but the gags smack of desperation.

Name : Rafer Guzman / Alias : Newsday
Lacks the wickedly funny spirit of the original "Vacation."

Name : Scott Foundas / Alias : Variety
A trip to the corner store with this cast of characters would be an endurance test - which, with any luck, is as far as the movie's box office returns will carry it.

Name : Rebecca Keegan / Alias : Los Angeles Times
The kind of movie that exists because greenlighting it is easier than thinking.

Name : Alonso Duralde / Alias : TheWrap
All too true to the experience of taking a long family trip: there are a few special moments you'll remember and talk about later, but for the most part, it's a featureless, repetitive voyage that can't be over soon enough.

Name : Jeannette Catsoulis / Alias : New York Times
I for one will never look at a blender the same way again.

Name : Bill Goodykoontz / Alias : Arizona Republic
It falls to Helms to carry the movie, and he's not quite up to it.

Name : Chris Nashawaty / Alias : Entertainment Weekly
The new Vacation is both better than I'd feared and not as hilarious as I'd hoped. It's intermittently funny and instantly forgettable.

Name : Stephanie Zacharek / Alias : Village Voice
This new Vacation is hardly an improvement on the old Vacation, and may in fact be worse. Neither of them, to borrow the immortal words of the Go-Go's, is all we ever wanted.

Name : Stephanie Merry / Alias : Washington Post
No one expects originality, but the new movie may end up making history: It's already looking like the worst movie of the year.

Name : Wesley Morris / Alias : Grantland
You can't do much worse at the movies than Vacation.

Name : James Berardinelli / Alias : ReelViews
Vacation passes the most important test of any comedy: it's funny.

Name : David Ehrlich / Alias : Time Out
A rare reboot so foul and humorless it makes you question whatever attachment you might have to the original, this lazy retread of Harold Ramis's 1983 Vacation sours everything that's made that film such an undying fixture of basic cable.

Name : Neil Genzlinger / Alias : New York Times
A very funny R-rated movie with a PG-13 heart.

Name : Bruce Demara / Alias : Toronto Star
It's taken more than 30 years for a new family of Griswolds to make an ill-fated cross-country trip to Walley World. Worth the wait? Not really.