Name : Alan Scherstuhl / Alias : Village Voice
The city and the plot points wheel right by, the leads fetchingly entranced with each other. If one patch of dares disappoints, there's another coming right up, and the directors stage and shoot them with swooning neon kinecticism.

Name : Stephanie Merry / Alias : Washington Post
Not only does it uncannily evoke the feelings of awkwardness, alienation and excitement that come with being a teenager, but it conjures the kind of suspense that will give your armrests a workout.

Name : Moira MacDonald / Alias : Seattle Times
Franco grins diabolically throughout, and Roberts sounds a bit like a junior version of Sarah Jessica Parker's "Sex and the City" character . otherwise, they're awfully bland, and it's hard to get too invested in their fate.

Name : Katie Walsh / Alias : Los Angeles Times
"Mr. Robot" meets "Battle Royale". a neon-saturated teenage dream, high on first kisses and digital hearts.

Name : Peter Travers / Alias : Rolling Stone
It gets off on the highwire fun of living on a digital dare and then pisses away its provocations by lecturing us with a metaphorical take on social media as an STD. What a buzz kill.

Name : James Berardinelli / Alias : ReelViews
Joost and Schulman use nearly every trick imaginable to keep Nerve's energy at a consistently high level and to give it a visual uniqueness.

Name : Brad Wheeler / Alias : Globe and Mail
Nerve looks fabulous and the pace is evenly adrenalized, which makes up for cliched characters, a concocted premise and commentary that is a bit on the nose .

Name : David Ehrlich / Alias : indieWIRE
Blisteringly cool one moment and ridiculously silly the next, this punchy and propulsive late summer surprise is able to capture the way we live now because it displays such a vivid understanding of the reasons why we live that way.

Name : Odie Henderson / Alias : RogerEbert.com
Part of me screamed for this film to get off my lawn, but an even bigger part of me succumbed to playing by its rules. Nerve is too much fun to stay mad at for long.

Name : Ty Burr / Alias : Boston Globe
For about 45 minutes, the movie's engrossing fluff, a stylish cautionary cyber-tale aimed primarily at teenage girls.

Name : A.A. Dowd / Alias : AV Club
Bright, brisk, and enjoyably silly .

Name : Nick Patch / Alias : Toronto Star
Like one of its daredevils hanging one-handed from skyscraper scaffolding, Nerve mostly manages to maintain its precarious balance of pulpy suspense and social commentary.

Name : Rafer Guzman / Alias : Newsday
An enjoyable teen flick about the glamour and danger of the internet.

Name : Owen Gleiberman / Alias : Variety
"Nerve," let's be clear, isn't a movie to take seriously, yet its fast lunge at topicality - the way it uses the contest at its center as a lightning-rod metaphor for how young adults interact in the digital age - is part of what's fun about it.

Name : Richard Roeper / Alias : Chicago Sun-Times
Emma Roberts and Dave Franco are just fine, but there's no huge onscreen spark between them. Most of the supporting roles are thinly drawn and forgettable.

Name : Leah Pickett / Alias : Chicago Reader
The film has a fatal messaging problem: it lambasts online group-think and "hiding behind screen names" while also glamorizing the game.

Name : Alison Willmore / Alias : BuzzFeed News
Nerve is a dizzyingly of-the-moment good time, a dystopian meet-cute in present-day New York.

Name : Alonso Duralde / Alias : TheWrap
While the film's vertiginous set pieces are appropriately heart-clenching, it's not nearly as successful at little details like plot and character.

Name : Adam Graham / Alias : Detroit News
"Nerve" is sharp looking and delivers real jolts, even if the climax pushes things a bit far and wraps up too easily. Or maybe it's an accurate look at what'll happen when "Nerve" becomes real?

Name : Justin Lowe / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
With its attractive young cast and a multiplatform media campaign, Nerve won't need to rely on going viral to find its audience, but it's unlikely to be trending for long once viewers digest its simplistically cautionary message.

Name : Matthew Lickona / Alias : San Diego Reader
If it collapses in the end by going dark and also bonkers and bringing in hackers ex machina to clean up its mess, well, directors Ariel Schulman and Henry Joost can say they did it for the feels.

Name : Anna Smith / Alias : Time Out
Other films - including David Fincher's The Game (1997) - have done this better, but with its engaging story, energetic soundtrack and slick production values, Nerve is an easy watch for restless young minds.

Name : Kyle Smith / Alias : New York Post
The sharpest, wildest and most unpredictable thriller I've seen this year .

Name : Tirdad Derakhshani / Alias : Philadelphia Inquirer
Nerve gives moviegoers everything they'd want from a teen romance. It's a little less successful as a critique of life in the age of Instagram.

Name : Kevin P. Sullivan / Alias : Entertainment Weekly
The perils of social media may be ripe for the after-school-special treatment, but less expectedly, they make for a half-decent Hunger Games riff.

Name : Mick LaSalle / Alias : San Francisco Chronicle
A successful and memorable thriller.

Name : Bill Goodykoontz / Alias : Arizona Republic
It comes off like a combination of "The Hunger Games," "Saw" and Pokemon Go. Maybe that sounds like a good thing. It's not.

Name : Allen Salkin / Alias : New York Daily News
Clever, exciting, sweet and full of quick twists that never devolve from serving a well-built story.

Name : Amy Nicholson / Alias : MTV
Nerve knows we're all playing the game.

Name : Jeannette Catsoulis / Alias : New York Times
[The] screenplay . amounts to little more than a string of flashy stunts before fizzling to a contrived close. For all its hints at imminent catastrophe, "Nerve" feels surprisingly tame.

Name : Rene Rodriguez / Alias : Miami Herald
The movie flirts with a great darkness about disillusionment and self-loathing even as it races around spinning comedic plates. Too bad the filmmakers lose their nerve by film's end.

Name : David Ehrlich / Alias : Time Out
The D Train ultimately generates so few laughs from its thin "be yourself" message that a commendable refusal to gawk at the gay stuff is all that keeps it on track.

Name : Claudia Puig / Alias : USA Today
The D Train is long on high-concept comedy, then runs out of steam and becomes a forced and far-fetched drama.

Name : Rafer Guzman / Alias : Newsday
"The D Train" may be a scant and rather unconvincing comedy, but it deserves credit for taking a risk.

Name : Peter Travers / Alias : Rolling Stone
Some critics are getting all up in the face of this audacious dark comedy for, well, being audacious. What are we supposed think about a movie that doesn't conform to formula? I'd start with grateful.

Name : Mark Jenkins / Alias : NPR
The filmmakers proceed as if they're making a conventional high-school comedy, papering over the holes in the script with pop songs.

Name : Sandy Cohen / Alias : Associated Press
The issue is the story. It's not just uneven, it's often unfunny: tinged with homophobia and centered on a wholly unlikeable, self-absorbed man.

Name : Mick LaSalle / Alias : San Francisco Chronicle
It should be obvious by now that Black is much more than a funny fellow. This is a good actor with a particular strength at playing protected, disturbed personalities - secretly angry people trying with all their might to be something they're not.

Name : Mike D'Angelo / Alias : AV Club
It's a mess, but it's a commendable mess. Bonus points for ambition and nerve.

Name : Tom Russo / Alias : Boston Globe
Any real resonance gets swallowed up by a story that's excruciatingly uncomfortable rather than genuinely funny.

Name : Rex Reed / Alias : New York Observer
So many t's are uncrossed and i's undotted that the movie is a mess. Still, I was fascinated by what it might have been.

Name : Justin Chang / Alias : Variety
Edgy and soft, audacious and coy, a largely enjoyable letdown.

Name : James Rocchi / Alias : TheWrap
Black gives a career-highlight performance as an all-too-regular-guy tripped up by fame, fear, bad high school memories and a diabolically charming James Marsden in a strange, sharp comedy.

Name : Robert Abele / Alias : Los Angeles Times
A recognizably delusional schlub sits at the center of the loser comedy "The D Train," thanks to the sad-sack acumen of Jack Black.

Name : Colin Covert / Alias : Minneapolis Star Tribune
A bromantic comedy with a sharp edge of melancholy, this indie casts Jack Black and James Marsden in the sort of parts they play frequently, then pushes them toward pathos.

Name : Richard Brody / Alias : New Yorker
[A] queasy, schematic, wanly sentimental comedy .

Name : Richard Roeper / Alias : Chicago Sun-Times
Nothing about "The D Train" feels the least bit authentic, and worse, little about it is funny. That's a deadly recipe for a dark comedy.

Name : Joe Williams / Alias : St. Louis Post-Dispatch
While Black is painfully effective as the dork who drops slangy kudos on his new BFF, Marsden is a revelation.

Name : Katharine Pushkar / Alias : New York Daily News
Black's narcissistic, obsessive, stunted Dan is so careless about all his relationships - with his wife, son, boss - that you wonder how he ever had them in the first place.

Name : Alan Scherstuhl / Alias : Village Voice
The D Train has one great idea, a couple strong jokes, and a void at its center - a man who is only believable when he briefly becomes specific.

Name : Moira MacDonald / Alias : Seattle Times
Writer/directors Jarrad Paul and Andrew Mogel let the movie run out of steam a bit before its ending (things get weirdly gooey), but Black keeps us hanging on as "The D Train" swerves; you hope that, somehow, he'll get through the journey safely.

Name : Tom Long / Alias : Detroit News
A cringe-filled comic rumination on the cost of being cool, "The D Train" starts out as straight silliness and then turns to more aching matters.

Name : Manohla Dargis / Alias : New York Times
For long stretches, "The D Train" serves as a commodious vehicle for Mr. Black, who, like the best comic performers, never seems remotely concerned about going too big or risking the audience's love.

Name : Bilge Ebiri / Alias : New York Magazine/Vulture
The last act of The D Train becomes a hilarious, deeply weird, and ultimately touching medley of delusion, humiliation, and friendship.

Name : John Anderson / Alias : Wall Street Journal
While it dwells in a much darker realm than American humor generally ventures into, what it uncovers is worth a stare. Maybe even a shudder.

Name : Ben Sachs / Alias : Chicago Reader
For a vulgar American comedy, this is refreshingly low-key and generous. I admired its intentions without finding it all that funny.

Name : James Berardinelli / Alias : ReelViews
Andrew Mogel and Jarrad Paul, making their directorial debut, manage the difficult task of keeping the audience engaged even though both of the main characters are unlikable.

Name : Ann Hornaday / Alias : Washington Post
"The D Train" is far from perfect - up to and including the waste of Kathryn Hahn in a lifeless, stereotypical role as Dan's wife - but it has its moments. And most of them belong to Marsden.

Name : Kyle Smith / Alias : New York Post
"The D Train" is a good-humored, warm-hearted movie in which Black, as usual, excels.

Name : Todd McCarthy / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
Some may buy it, but from several perspectives what takes place simply seems beyond the pale dramatically; it's hard to believe things would go as far as they do.

Name : Barbara VanDenburgh / Alias : Arizona Republic
The film goes off the beaten path to tell a very familiar story in an unfamiliar way, turning the mismatched buddy dynamic Black and Marsden had developed into something much more complicated and interesting.