Name : David Edelstein / Alias : New York Magazine/Vulture
The Wolfpack is a reminder that much of the "crap" we decry has the potential to liberate, offering a bridge off the island of terror we call the nuclear family.

Name : John DeFore / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
Scratching the surface of a story one suspects is a good deal thornier than what's explicitly shown here, Crystal Moselle's The Wolfpack introduces a gang of siblings who have been raised in near-complete isolation in downtown Manhattan.

Name : Amy Nicholson / Alias : L.A. Weekly
A Manhattan fable about fear

Name : Kenneth Turan / Alias : Los Angeles Times
Even in the context of Tolstoy's famous dictum that every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way, the story of the Angulo brothers stands out.

Name : Mick LaSalle / Alias : San Francisco Chronicle
We are presented with something peculiar, that's noteworthy mainly for it's just being weird. Frankly, it's not weird enough to completely engage viewers for more than 90 minutes.

Name : Joshua Rothkopf / Alias : Time Out
Filmmaker Crystal Moselle has seized onto terrifically compelling material, and while she hangs back with admirable distance, Grey Gardens-like, you wonder how she earned the Angulos' trust.

Name : Simon Houpt / Alias : Globe and Mail
If the film is patchy, it shows promise. Thankfully, so do the boys themselves.

Name : Ignatiy Vishnevetsky / Alias : AV Club
What starts as a nonfiction mood piece grows frustratingly opaque as the brothers begin to venture out into the real world, meet girls, and get jobs.

Name : Scott Foundas / Alias : Variety
There is much to enjoy in director Crystal Moselle's debut documentary feature, which if nothing else begs a where-are-they-now sequel a few years down the road.

Name : Katharine Pushkar / Alias : New York Daily News
There is a train-wreck quality to this film. The story is so astounding, you can't look away.

Name : Moira MacDonald / Alias : Seattle Times
A strange and fascinating experience; you feel like you've been given entry into a mysterious world, where no one else is permitted.

Name : Anthony Lane / Alias : New Yorker
Their virtual imprisonment has shaped but not ruined them, and we slowly see them venture into the wilds of regular existence.

Name : Peter Rainer / Alias : Christian Science Monitor
Undeniably fascinating.

Name : Ella Taylor / Alias : NPR
Moselle is also a patient observer who, without judgment or superfluous underlining, gradually teases out the pathos and the riveting dramas - some dark and disturbing, some bizarrely entertaining and heartening - of the parents.

Name : Peter Howell / Alias : Toronto Star
[It] has to be seen to be believed.

Name : Manohla Dargis / Alias : New York Times
Sometimes, all you need is a great subject to make a great documentary - or a willingness to chase after total strangers.

Name : Michael O'Sullivan / Alias : Washington Post
More than a testament to the power of cinematic storytelling as food for the human spirit, "The Wolfpack" also is a portrait of a family that has had to rely on each other to survive.

Name : Peter Travers / Alias : Rolling Stone
What if all you knew of the world came from Hollywood movies? That's a loaded question - and Crystal Moselle's gripping doc runs with it. You won't be able to pull your eyes off the screen.

Name : Wesley Morris / Alias : Grantland
What a sad, strange, intoxicating movie.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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