The reviews lean towards disappointment, with praise concentrated in individual comic performances rather than the film as a whole. The Guardian is the clear enthusiast, finding the juvenile humour winning and praising Mark Wahlberg’s comic performance alongside Dave Palmer’s samba- and bossa nova-inflected score. The Hollywood Reporter finds the comedy increasingly tiresome but singles out Sacha Baron Cohen’s unintelligible accent as its funniest element. There is little agreement on how much these performances redeem the material.
Reservations centre on repetition, crude humour and weak plotting. The AV Club finds the genital jokes repetitive and the story stagnant, while Empire objects to shapeless crude set-pieces and offensive stereotypes, finding little to enjoy. The spread is wide, from affectionate approval to outright rejection. Three of the seven reviews have no accessible verdict or supporting detail, however, so the specific points of agreement rest on the four readable accounts.