Name : Ben Sachs / Alias : Chicago Reader
The young leads lack charisma, and the veteran supporting players seem to be phoning it in.

Name : Christy Lemire / Alias : RogerEbert.com
"Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials" crams in more lore, supporting characters, backstories and motivations to the extent that it becomes difficult to get a grasp on anything.

Name : Tom Russo / Alias : Boston Globe
The movie may feel tonally consistent with the first, but it's also overlong and thoroughly routine.

Name : James Rocchi / Alias : TheWrap
There's no flare of strangeness or freshness here, just a pile of images and ideas stolen from smarter people's second-hand bin banged into each other for a numbingly dull 132 minutes.

Name : John Williams / Alias : New York Times
The many chases and ludicrous narrow escapes offer respectable doses of adrenaline.

Name : Bilge Ebiri / Alias : New York Magazine/Vulture
Essentially, The Scorch Trials makes up for the humdrum YApocalypse of its first half by going a little bonkers in its second.

Name : Michael O'Sullivan / Alias : Washington Post
It's exhausting, yet emotionally unengaging.

Name : Andrew Parker / Alias : Globe and Mail
The sequel is terrible and all my original criticisms for the first film still stand, but at least it's a more entertaining kind of awful.

Name : Andrew Barker / Alias : Variety
The latest 'Maze Runner' movie succeeds well enough as derivative survival-horror-action thrillers go, but makes for an unsatisfying, confusing sequel.

Name : James Berardinelli / Alias : ReelViews
With minimal plot development and far too much running around in dark corridors, The Scorch Trials has a poor story:filler ratio. And much of what happens is poorly thought-out.

Name : Bill Goodykoontz / Alias : Arizona Republic
Director Wes Ball's film is a mad dash from one place to the next, with little time in between for rest, recuperation or plot development.

Name : Colin Covert / Alias : Minneapolis Star Tribune
Action overflows, some of it neatly staged but none of it telling us anything beyond "Go! Go! Go! Run! Run! Run!" Stay home, stay home.

Name : Jim Slotek / Alias : Toronto Sun
If it sounds like there isn't an original thought in The Scorch Trials' scripted head, you're right. But at least you won't be smacking yourself in the head trying to figure out what's going on.

Name : Tom Long / Alias : Detroit News
This story was better off back in the maze.

Name : Soren Anderson / Alias : Seattle Times
This time around, the kids have been turned into wind-up figures whose only function - taking the title a tad too literally - is to RUN!

Name : Kevin P. Sullivan / Alias : Entertainment Weekly
The Scorch Trials wanders between YA cliches - there's a Resistance, but it's unclear what they're resisting - and zombie movie tropes, with the obligatory a zombie bit our friend scene.

Name : Justin Lowe / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
Lacks a . sense of originality and urgency, undercut by overly familiar characterizations and dilatory pacing.

Name : Rafer Guzman / Alias : Newsday
The teen dystopian franchise continues to play rough, and now even rougher, with satisfying results.

Name : Brian Truitt / Alias : USA Today
Maze Runner's action, suspense and twists give movie fans of all ages a chance to embrace their inner on-the-run teenager.

Name : Michael Sragow / Alias : Los Angeles Times
The first "Maze Runner" film was a wilderness saga refitted with robotic monsters. "The Scorch Trials" is a "Mad Max" film on foot.

Name : Kyle Smith / Alias : New York Post
To wait a movie and a half for a big reveal and have it turn out to be a zombie plague is like waiting until March for your Christmas present, and it turning out to be a three-pack of white Hanes T-shirts.

Name : Katharine Pushkar / Alias : New York Daily News
Yes, these "Trials" go on too long. But they're never dull, and the kids are always good company.

Name : Michael Phillips / Alias : Chicago Tribune
The material may be cardboard, but the actors do what they can.

Name : Tasha Robinson / Alias : AV Club
After an hour and a half of mechanical 10-minute action cycles that start with, "Maybe we're safe now, for the moment," and end with "Aaaah! Run!" the pattern gets as wearying as the level of emotional brutality.

Name : Todd McCarthy / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
A really raunchy, very dirty and pretty funny goof on the entire superhero ethos, as well as the first Marvel film to irreverently trash the brand.

Name : Tom Huddleston / Alias : Time Out
Rarely boring, but not half as smart, funny or subversive as it clearly believes itself to be.

Name : Stephen Whitty / Alias : Newark Star-Ledger
It's fun, but it's not for everyone, and definitely not for families.

Name : Michael Phillips / Alias : Chicago Tribune
Reynolds is entertaining; it's rather sweet to see this eternally not-quite-a-star get closer than usual to justifying star billing.

Name : Justin Chang / Alias : Variety
Ryan Reynolds gets the full-throttle wisecracking showcase he deserves in this scabrously funny origin story.

Name : Peter Howell / Alias : Toronto Star
Reynolds' mighty mutant title character is anything but a conventional superdude, even before he acquires his extreme skills, red-hooded cosplay costume and scarred face and mind.

Name : Britton Peele / Alias : Dallas Morning News
Calling Deadpool "just another comic book movie" would do injustice to a film that makes a strong effort to deliver something different.

Name : Kenneth Turan / Alias : Los Angeles Times
You're initially jazzed by his effrontery, but Deadpool, with his relentlessly glib, nothing-sacred attitude, is not an individual who wears particularly well.

Name : James Berardinelli / Alias : ReelViews
This is a different kind of movie. The only rule it adheres to is that tropes are made to be eviscerated, turned on their heads, and trampled over.

Name : Soren Anderson / Alias : Seattle Times
Maximally cheeky. Perversely potty-mouthed. Riotously funny. Insanely violent. Uneven as all get out. And fun, fun, fun.

Name : Peter Rainer / Alias : Christian Science Monitor
It seems less irreverent than self-congratulatory.

Name : Barry Hertz / Alias : Globe and Mail
Deadpool is everything that Hollywood has raised audiences to believe heroes are not: crass, selfish and with a vocabulary that would have made George Carlin blush.

Name : David Edelstein / Alias : New York Magazine/Vulture
It's not subversive - it's meant to elasticize and enhance the superhero genre, to flatter the audience for being hip enough to get all of those in-jokes. And I was flattered.

Name : Bob Mondello / Alias : NPR
Deadpool . has the singular virtue of being funnier than we've been led to believe a superhero film can be.

Name : Randy Myers / Alias : San Jose Mercury News
While "Deadpool" heralds the arrival of a talented new director, its success belongs to Reynolds, who also served as a producer.

Name : Peter Travers / Alias : Rolling Stone
this movie's junky feel is part of its charm. Sure it goes on too long and repetition dulls its initial cleverness. Still, Deadpool is party time for action junkies and Reynolds may just have found the role that makes his career.

Name : Brian Truitt / Alias : USA Today
Deadpool avoids enough pitfalls to both embrace and flambe the superhero genre while also finding time for romance, doling out equal handfuls of bullets, barbs and warm fuzzies.

Name : Bill Goodykoontz / Alias : Arizona Republic
It takes a strong stomach for extreme violence and over-the-top obscenity, but if you're willing to roll with that, "Deadpool" is a hoot.

Name : A.A. Dowd / Alias : AV Club
Just as Deadpool himself wears a mask to hide his hideous features, Deadpool conceals a highly conventional origin story under a lot of winking self-awareness.

Name : Mick LaSalle / Alias : San Francisco Chronicle
This is bad, borderline garbage, but disturbing, too, in that it's just the kind of fake-clever awfulness that might be cinema's future.

Name : Ethan Sacks / Alias : New York Daily News
The politically incorrect material suits Ryan Reynolds as snugly as Marvel's tight red costume, giving the Canadian actor a chance to work out his mutant power for hurling snarky one-liners.

Name : Christopher Orr / Alias : The Atlantic
Flamboyantly vulgar and determinedly self-referential, Deadpool has the shape of a superhero movie but the soul of a Danny McBride flick.

Name : Kyle Smith / Alias : New York Post
There aren't many superhero movies that exploit the liberating effects of the hard-R rating. But to me, the mock opening credits are the only detail that is fresh - sophomoric, but fresh.

Name : Adam Graham / Alias : Detroit News
Reynolds has never meshed as well with a character or found a better outlet for his smirking, smart aleck persona.

Name : Lindsey Bahr / Alias : Associated Press
In the end, it's hard to shake the feeling that they've made a movie for boys that only adults are allowed to see. For the future sleepover party where some open-minded parent allows a screening, it'll surely be a blast.

Name : Manohla Dargis / Alias : New York Times
The filmmakers do a lot of winking and rib poking; they sell "Deadpool" so hard that you might wonder if Marvel has started to pay on commission.

Name : Stephanie Zacharek / Alias : TIME Magazine
Deadpool, intended as a spiky antidote to superhero oversaturation, ends up impaling only itself.

Name : Colin Covert / Alias : Minneapolis Star Tribune
Is it a hoot? Largely, yeah, if you like smug, dumb in-your-face humor.

Name : Richard Roeper / Alias : Chicago Sun-Times
If only Deadpool were as clever, dark and funny as it believes itself to be.

Name : Cary Darling / Alias : Fort Worth Star-Telegram/DFW.com
Deadpool succeeds where other irreverent send-ups of the genre failed. [But] the over-the-top mayhem, do-you-kiss-your-mother-with-that-mouth trash talk, and jokey cynicism can't stop [it] from hurtling toward predictability.

Name : Alan Scherstuhl / Alias : Village Voice
Deadpool benefits from an intimate story with more heart than you would expect, but also a go-for-broke zeal, edging at times into Naked Gun-style parody.

Name : Tirdad Derakhshani / Alias : Philadelphia Inquirer
Deadpool is, on the whole, a big bowl of fun filled with great stunts, gory fight scenes, and sexy poses.

Name : Leah Pickett / Alias : Chicago Reader
Fans of X-Men will gobble it up, especially lewd teenage boys; newcomers to the Marvel Universe may miss some of the best zingers.

Name : Alonso Duralde / Alias : TheWrap
It's a film that's amused with itself, but thanks to a screwball screenplay by Rhett Rheese and Paul Wernick and a charmingly snarky lead turn by Ryan Reynolds, that amusement is both thoroughly earned and completely contagious.

Name : Tom Russo / Alias : Boston Globe
Imagine Spider-Man with legitimately funny quips, waaay less angst, and a bug-eyed getup that's lethally accessorized.

Name : Calvin Wilson / Alias : St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Smart, sexy and outrageous, "Deadpool" delivers.

Name : Anthony Lane / Alias : New Yorker
Watching the film is like sitting at dinner with a teen-ager who believes that, if he swears long and loudly enough, he will shock the grownups into accepting him as one of their own.

Name : Michael O'Sullivan / Alias : Washington Post
It's a voraciously self-aware comedy, one that dines out on the inherent inanity of its own premise as much as it does the movies it's competing with.

Name : Will Leitch / Alias : The New Republic
Deadpool is obnoxious and puerile and infantile and has an irritating meta tone so snide that it's constantly in danger of nullifying the entire movie - and I still got a pretty big kick out of it.