Name : Keith Uhlich / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
Wrongheaded, utterly incompetent, and nearly laugh-free .

Name : Jesse Hassenger / Alias : AV Club
A tortured use of another movie's absurd mythology to help make muddled quasi-satirical points, while indulging the apparently fail-safe punchline of saying the word "purge" about once a minute.

Name : Christy Lemire / Alias : RogerEbert.com
The movie as a whole is such an incompetent train wreck, you can't look away, just to see how much worse it can get.

Name : Inkoo Kang / Alias : TheWrap
A fairly ambitious picture tailor-made for that slice of the Christian audience accustomed to the tropes and beats of prestige cable dramas.

Name : Christian Holub / Alias : Entertainment Weekly
Risen is more entertaining than Bible-adjacent stories are usually allowed to be.

Name : Justin Chang / Alias : Variety
Whether or not it triggers a craze for divinely inspired detective stories, "Risen" makes a decent case for itself as the "Columbo" of the genre: It's amiable, creaky and not remotely predicated on the element of surprise.

Name : Kyle Smith / Alias : New York Post
A low-IQ affair that supposes that the Gospels will sound more convincing if seen through the eyes of a skeptic. Instead, it seeks to improve the New Testament by putting a layer of Naugahyde upholstery on it.

Name : Adam Graham / Alias : Detroit News
"Risen" was never meant as anything but a tool for the converted. Talk about preaching to the choir.

Name : Joshua Rothkopf / Alias : Time Out
It's not often that faith-based films, competing in the same marketplace that rewards action, embrace the deeper, more difficult idea of meeting hate with love, but Risen tries.

Name : Tirdad Derakhshani / Alias : Philadelphia Inquirer
While it descends too often into the melodramatic, it's a solid, smart picture and a welcome addition to the genre.

Name : Ignatiy Vishnevetsky / Alias : AV Club
The film ends up falling into a loop of abortive climaxes, set against an indistinguishable beige-gray backdrop of limestone, before the inevitable cheap-looking flash of CGI light in a scraggly field.

Name : Bilge Ebiri / Alias : New York Magazine/Vulture
For a film that could have easily become bogged down in Sunday School reverence, or culture-war opportunism, Risen presents an intriguing, oblique approach to a Bible movie.

Name : Peter Keough / Alias : Boston Globe
We know how it turns out, but seeing from the point of view of someone who doesn't know and doesn't believe adds more cogency.

Name : Jeannette Catsoulis / Alias : New York Times
If you drink every time you're reminded of Monty Python's 1979 Judean jaunt, "Life of Brian," you might just make it through to the end.

Name : Ann Hornaday / Alias : Washington Post
Viewers already well-versed in the greatest story ever told might find their interest piqued by the filmmakers' unconventional take. It's unlikely, however, that "Risen" will preach to anyone outside the choir.

Name : Bill Goodykoontz / Alias : Arizona Republic
It's not especially challenging. But it is several steps up from some faith-based fare, and it will doubtless appeal to its target audience.

Name : Michael Nordine / Alias : Village Voice
Despite not doing much more than preach to the choir, Risen is still more nuanced than the lion's share of recent faith-based dramas.

Name : Mick LaSalle / Alias : San Francisco Chronicle
Whatever your religious affiliation, you will come away thinking that if all this did actually happen, it probably happened something like this.

Name : Jim Slotek / Alias : Toronto Sun
It's nice to finally see the Messiah portrayed by somebody who'd probably get extra attention at a U.S. airport by Homeland Security.

Name : Richard Roeper / Alias : Chicago Sun-Times
Fiennes sticks with the brooding, stoic performance, even when Clavius is undergoing some major changes. It's not his best work.

Name : Peter Howell / Alias : Toronto Star
It's intended primarily for an audience of Christian believers, but genuine drama precedes the preaching.

Name : Kate Taylor / Alias : Globe and Mail
The film features a lush historical setting and some satisfying action scenes, but the dialogue is often laughable, a mix of the pseudo-archaic with oddly contemporary lingo.

Name : Stephen Whitty / Alias : New York Daily News
Reynolds' gets many things right: the blasted look of the desert, the dusty provincial look of a far-flung Roman outpost. And the story he tells is both serious and modest.

Name : Amy Nicholson / Alias : MTV
It's pointed about how we treat today's zealots, as when Clavius likens the pain of crucification to "sucking air through a wet cloth" - a description of waterboarding.

Name : Soren Anderson / Alias : Seattle Times
Fiennes is superb, portraying a man slowly transformed by events that shake his beliefs about the world and his place in it to their core.

Name : Katie Walsh / Alias : Los Angeles Times
"Risen" is a fascinating cultural artifact, but as a film, it's destined for no glory greater than as an appropriate cable rerun on Easter.

Name : Colin Covert / Alias : Minneapolis Star Tribune
What a good surprise it was to watch a biblical feature less preachy, less stuffy and more entertaining than most. "Risen" is an original crime-fiction take on a story as old as stories get.

Name : Jesse Hassenger / Alias : AV Club
Most of the time, the banter doesn't sound like banter; the movie shares Sasha and Paige's unforced shorthand.

Name : David Ehrlich / Alias : Time Out New York
Limited by the same arch tone and flippant jokes that suffocate every other low-budget indie about Gen Y confronting adulthood.

Name : Inkoo Kang / Alias : TheWrap
"A waxen falseness suffuses the stilted, stubbornly generic picture. Like the fast-food mozzarella sticks one of the characters devours in moments of existential woe, it feels like a calculated imitation rather than the real thing."

Name : Sara Stewart / Alias : New York Post
Fogel's focus is female friendship, and the challenges presented by growing older and pairing up. It all makes for a rocky road, regardless of the romantic rival's gender.

Name : Katie Walsh / Alias : Los Angeles Times
Meester and Jacobs have an easy, authentic chemistry, but there isn't enough structure or storytelling thrust to sustain interest in the plot: Triumphs, calamities and reunions keep happening, but none contains real dramatic heft.

Name : Ronnie Scheib / Alias : Variety
A well-scripted, intriguingly-acted effort to mine the theme of prolonged adolescent best-buddyism through two women.

Name : Amy Nicholson / Alias : L.A. Weekly
Fogel refuses to pander by pretending that the girls can fix everything with a hug. Sacrifices must be made.

Name : Frank Scheck / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
The two stars display a winning chemistry in this amusingly observant study of female friendship.

Name : Claudia Puig / Alias : USA Today
The charming story about millennial confusion is deftly written by Susanna Fogel (who also directs) and Joni Lefkowitz, and the dialog actually sounds like the way a pair of smart and funny twentysomethings might really talk.