Four Lions: Press reviews

'consistently funny and horribly to the point'

'shockingly hilarious, stiletto-sharp satire'

'funny though it always is, there is perhaps not the same level of relentless, sulphurous verbal invention and brutal gags that we saw in, say, The Thick of It or In the Loop.'

'somehow Morris has managed to pull off an impossible feat: be sympathetic to the terrorists while destroying them from within'

'Some scenes are hilarious; some are too loopy or uncomfortable to provoke laughs; all strive to achieve something genuinely unusual and essentially true'

'a roar of humanist outrage; comic wadding packed around an acidic, acerbic centre.'

'becomes a comedy of errors as much as a tragedy or an allegory.'

'this bold venture shows that Morris dares laugh where others only splutter with nervous embarrassment: Four Lions is a comedy that puts the error in terror'

'Not as funny or as controversial as many would have expected, but there are still many moments of Chris Morris genius here'

'a very watchable film debut, but there's none of the stylistic daring of his past work, either. You wouldn't know this was a Chris Morris film merely by watching it. '

'It is an honourable aim. But it still left me wishing he'd provoked us into laughter'

'The makers claim that 'what This Is Spinal Tap did for heavy metal and Dr Strangelove for the cold war, Four Lions does for the modern face of terrorism'. This is palpably absurd. '

'Perhaps if the film were funnier, we wouldn't look for reasons why comedy and global cataclysm seem a less than perfect match.'