Rawson Marshall Thurber's Skyscraper arrives at the box office this weekend with the most wham: It's "the biggest-budgeted 'not based on anything' release of the year," per Forbes, and stars heartthrob Dwayne "the Rock" Johnson as a former FBI operative turned security expert under siege. When it comes to reviews, however, two lesser-known flicks are blowing it out of the water. Here's what critics are saying about Skyscraper (51% rating on Rotten Tomatoes), Eighth Grade (98%), and Sorry To Bother You (96%):
Skyscraper:
- "This largely humorless yet occasionally thrilling action movie milks the screen charisma of [Johnson] … to gloss over its hilariously unconvincing story, in which nearly every twist and big reveal feels like an insult to the viewer's intelligence," writes Edmund Lee at the South China Morning Post, though he says "it's nice to see Hong Kong's scenery."
- Colin Covert applauds Johnson's "innate charm and earnest gung-ho approach." As for the movie, "the one place it brims with assurance is in lifting plot points from earlier, better movies without fear of triggering intellectual property lawsuits," he writes at the Minneapolis Star Tribune. "Here and there I liked it. But I liked it more three decades earlier when it was called Die Hard."