Name : Peter Travers / Alias : Rolling Stone
Director Jonathan Demme, with music in his DNA, offers a heartfelt salute to those who play the underside of rock & roll because, well, they have to. Too bad the rest of the movie is dime-a-dozen family soap opera.

Name : Kenneth Turan / Alias : Los Angeles Times
Diablo Cody's dispiriting screenplay is all about everyone coming to love Ricki, faults and all, and that is just not convincingly done.

Name : Susanna Schrobsdorff / Alias : TIME Magazine
Streep's latest mom role, as Ricki Rendazzo in Ricki and the Flash, has a light, Mamma Mia! vibe, but it still hits all those hot buttons.

Name : Peter Howell / Alias : Toronto Star
Worth watching, and rocking to.

Name : Bill Goodykoontz / Alias : Arizona Republic
What might have been must be better than what's here, because what's here isn't much.

Name : Lindsey Bahr / Alias : Associated Press
Ultimately, spending time with these people is pleasant, lived-in, honest and even thought-provoking. And when the dialogue stops, there's a fun, golden not-too-oldies live music soundtrack to hum along with too.

Name : Stephen Whitty / Alias : Newark Star-Ledger
While there are some bright notes in Cody's writing, the situations feel a little tired, and the characters unexplored.

Name : Richard Roeper / Alias : Chicago Sun-Times
The skilled veteran Demme alternates dysfunctional family confrontations with easy comedy, expertly peppering in just the right rock tunes along the way. It's hard not to like Ricki, but the film makes no excuses for her actions.

Name : Tina Hassannia / Alias : Globe and Mail
Regardless of its flimsy emotional interior, Ricki is a worthy addition in this year's growing canon of strong female-centred films, and it would be wise to remember Streep's stunning performance come awards season.

Name : Joe Morgenstern / Alias : Wall Street Journal
There are fleeting moments of real fun. Still, it's hard not to wonder why so much in the movie went so wrong.

Name : J. R. Jones / Alias : Chicago Reader
The result is cold porridge.

Name : Andrew Barker / Alias : Variety
This is a shaggy, easily distractible film that consistently defies expectations to both charming and baffling effect.

Name : David Edelstein / Alias : New York Magazine/Vulture
Ricki and the Flash swerves near stereotypes and swerves away at every turn.

Name : A.O. Scott / Alias : New York Times
"Ricki and the Flash" seems like a squandered opportunity for this humane, curious and liberal-minded filmmaker to reflect on some uncomfortable realities. This isn't really rock 'n' roll. It's easy listening.

Name : Moira MacDonald / Alias : Seattle Times
Streep's performance, like lightning, jolts everything.

Name : Amy Nicholson / Alias : L.A. Weekly
If only Demme had shot a scene of Ricki stubbing out a joint on a "Cathy" comic strip.

Name : Leah Greenblatt / Alias : Entertainment Weekly
Ricki raises smart questions about why a mother's musical ambitions are so much more selfish than, say, seven-time dad Mick Jagger's, and even the shamelessly corny sing-along finale wrings a few real tears out.

Name : Spencer Kornhaber / Alias : The Atlantic
Just when the story beats start to feel unbearably obvious, the film changes keys, becoming less family dramedy than a concert film.

Name : Calvin Wilson / Alias : St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Quite a few filmgoers lament the shortage of movies for adults. "Ricki and the Flash" goes against that trend with rock 'n' roll attitude.

Name : Sara Stewart / Alias : New York Post
The movie itself seems equally divided between the sensibilities of hyperverbal writer Diablo Cody and music-centric director Jonathan Demme, and ends up falling into a muddy gap between the two.

Name : Rafer Guzman / Alias : Newsday
Streep and Springfield make a surprisingly sweet pair of retirement-age rockers, but the scattered story line keeps losing the beat.

Name : Michael Phillips / Alias : Chicago Tribune
All good protagonists are contradictory tangles of experience and disappointment, but Cody is so tentative in her approach, nothing gathers steam or sticks in emotional terms.

Name : Peter Rainer / Alias : Christian Science Monitor
Despite Streep's best efforts, Ricki seems more of a contrivance than a flesh-and-blood character.

Name : Sheri Linden / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
Even with its well-observed moments, the movie's nonmusical interactions, whether reaching for laughs or poignancy, too often feel flat and forced.

Name : James Berardinelli / Alias : ReelViews
The movie is mature in the way it handles the regrets of absentee parents and the ways in which their children relate to them. There's a little Hollywood artifice here but not so much that the emotions feel inauthentic.

Name : Joe Neumaier / Alias : New York Daily News
The story here, like a lot of bar bands, goes loud to cover up mediocrity. When Streep sings, though, so does the film.

Name : Alonso Duralde / Alias : TheWrap
An assemblage of almost-characters in an almost-story, resulting in a very disappointing almost-movie.

Name : Ann Hornaday / Alias : Washington Post
It's a crowd-pleaser every bit as calculated and earnestly defanged as a Golden Oldies bus-and-truck tour. It's fun while it lasts, even if the Bic lighters stay safely pocketed at the end of the show.

Name : Wesley Morris / Alias : Grantland
The film, which Diablo Cody wrote and Jonathan Demme directed, is a work of bulk-size bogusness. Barely a single scene is convincing.

Name : Joshua Rothkopf / Alias : Time Out
Streep finds her way to the soul of several songs. There's devastating connection and tears in these moments: delicate gratitude in "Drift Away," nothing short of maternal redemption in a roaring version of Springsteen's "My Love Will Not Let You Down."

Name : Steven Rea / Alias : Philadelphia Inquirer
Demme has already made a messed-up family matrimonial get-together way better than this, with a way better screenplay than the one Juno writer Cody has tossed off.

Name : Scott Tobias / Alias : NPR
A warmth radiates through Ricki and the Flash like a song sung true. A film that adores its characters this much is sure to be adored in kind.

Name : Ignatiy Vishnevetsky / Alias : AV Club
As in Demme's best early work (Handle With Care, Melvin & Howard), there is both an affection for a uniquely American type of oddball and a clear-eyed sense of their foibles.

Name : Colin Covert / Alias : Minneapolis Star Tribune
Creating a film with solid drama beside good humor is tough. It's harder still to balance them against a complicated character so they don't sprawl lopsided, and to send the audience home feeling satisfied.

Name : Preston Jones / Alias : Fort Worth Star-Telegram/DFW.com
The film roars to life too intermittently.but, sadly, too much of Ricki and the Flash is just the same old song.

Name : Mick LaSalle / Alias : San Francisco Chronicle
If only Streep would have put down the microphone and let Springfield sing "Jessie's Girl," "Ricki and the Flash" might have had half a chance.

Name : Patrick Dunn / Alias : Detroit News
Streep may have just been looking for some variety and an Oscar. But why is Demme, the great director of "The Silence of the Lambs," wasting his time on this?

Name : Dana Stevens / Alias : Slate
The screenplay doesn't lack for memorable zingers, and thanks to Cody's script and Streep's performance, Ricki emerges as a complex, self-contradictory person (even if most of the supporting characters don't).

Name : Ty Burr / Alias : Boston Globe
"Ricki and the Flash" feels like "Stella Dallas" as remade by Jean Renoir - it's a humanist suburban fable.

Name : Leah Greenblatt / Alias : Entertainment Weekly
As silly and sometimes nonsensical as it is, the movie is surprisingly sweet and well-intentioned.

Name : Patrick Dunn / Alias : Detroit News
Hardcore fans won't find much of the Jem they loved under the movie's achingly hip millennial trappings, while young newcomers will be left wondering what a robot has to do with a rock band.

Name : Linda Barnard / Alias : Toronto Star
Jem has lost her outrageousness and gained a robotic sidekick in an overlong, low-budget big-screen reboot of the 1980s toy-selling cartoon series.

Name : Neil Genzlinger / Alias : New York Times
It seems to be merely tossing ideas into the pot that it thinks might appeal to 9-year-olds.

Name : Alonso Duralde / Alias : TheWrap
Even though I wish the songs themselves were stronger, there's an energy and a vibrancy to the movie that its young target audience will appreciate.

Name : Geoff Berkshire / Alias : Variety
The film seems inexplicably embarrassed by its roots, instead serving up half-baked and self-consciously contemporary drama that no one in the sure-to-be minimal theatrical audience will remember quite so fondly some 30 years on.

Name : Scott Tobias / Alias : NPR
Jem and the Holograms is Mac and Me to Josie and the Pussycats' E.T.

Name : Frank Scheck / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
Not being part of the generation that watched the show, I can't vouch for its merits. But it's safe to say that it must be miles ahead of this wan, bloated screen version which forgoes the original's sci-fi and thriller aspects.

Name : Ben Sachs / Alias : Chicago Reader
Jon M. Chu, who directed the concert doc Justin Bieber: Never Say Never, maintains a lively pace, and there's some cute business involving a robot that communicates through music.

Name : Rebecca Keegan / Alias : Los Angeles Times
In revisiting the pop rock quest of a multiracial group of adopted sisters in suburban California, Chu has made a stylish and self-aware musical fantasy for the YouTube generation.

Name : Julia Cooper / Alias : Globe and Mail
There's hardly tension, barely any drama and the sugar high you might expect from an eighties redux is replaced by a dull aspartame buzz.

Name : Alan Scherstuhl / Alias : Village Voice
The movie's poky and confused, never clearly setting up its conflicts and blowing far too much of its running time on a National Treasure clue-hunt for messages Jem's father programmed into a sassy dancing robot.

Name : Jim Slotek / Alias : Toronto Sun
After a few crackling, resonant digital-age scenes in the opening act, the filmmakers settle in and make Jem into a mediocre Disney Channel movie - with, for no good reason, a pet robot.

Name : Molly Lambert / Alias : Grantland
What it lacks in humor it makes up for in sheer weirdness - it's a master class in How Did This Get Made? It feels focus-grouped to within an inch of its life, but it's so strange that it's impossible to imagine what process led us here.

Name : Ignatiy Vishnevetsky / Alias : AV Club
Its one saving grace is that Chu's direction is so wildly inconsistent that it manages to produce a handful of genuinely gorgeous images alongside all of the cruddy ones.

Name : Sara Stewart / Alias : New York Post
Director Jon Chu stretches "Jem" to a ridiculous 2 hours, via endless amateur-musician YouTube clips. Anyone can be a star, they attest - and always be yourself! (Except when you're Jem. I guess.)