Cowboys & Aliens: not such a winning combo

It's tempting to call Cowboys & Aliens a genre-busting film, but it actually falls within the dubious category of 'weird Westerns' along with Wild Wild West and Deadlands. Like its stablemates, some critics say, its sizzle may be better than the steak.
 
Despite its "widespread popcorn appeal", writes Anna Smith in Time Out, "the biggest problem is a lack of humour"... "A handful of funnies simply isn't enough in a film that should have been handled with B-movie glee rather than pompous plod."
 
"It's not groundbreaking, it's not perfect," agrees Empire's Dan Jolin, "but it's traditional and charming, and that counts for a lot."
 
Anyway, adds Jolin, Daniel Craig is "an intense presence, laconic, simmering and brutal, a creature of bone-snapping action rather than whip-smart wit".
 
The plot revolves around Craig, a Bourne-like wanted criminal who finds himself in the middle of nowhere with a metal cuff on his wrist and no memory of who he is. The presence of some truly gruesome aliens forces him to team up with gruff cattleman (Harrison Ford) while getting the girl (Olivia Wilde) in the process.
 
But what should have been a glorious, or at the very least playful, lassoing together of two cult-like genres falls flat on its face, says Manohla Dargis in the New York Times.
 
Director Jon Favreau "wavers uncertainly between goofy pastiche and seriousness," writes Dargis. Suffering from a "platitude-heavy script", the movie "wastes its title and misses the opportunity to play with ideas about the western and science-fiction horror".
 
For Kenneth Turan of the LA Times, the script is not the only thing that feels "hackneyed". "Cowboys & Aliens has a clumsy touch and zero feel for the intangibles of classic movie westerns," he says, and even Craig's presence is not enough to save it.
 
But for all those who have been eagerly waiting for what was hyped as the movie of the summer, there are some critics who liked it. The Washington Post's Ann Hornaday praises it for getting both genres "exactly right" and bucking the current trend of over-complicated plots by keeping it "plain-spoken and simple".
 
"As preposterous moneymakers go," says Chicago Sun-Times critic Roger Ebert, "it's ambitious and well-made. The acting from the large cast is of a high standard, Craig and Ford were more or less born into their roles."
 
Cowboys & Aliens is in cinemas now. ·