Street Fighter review roundup: sorry, folks, but it sounds like a mess

I had such high hopes for the Street Fighter movie: The trailers were so promising, the cast so charismatic, and it seemed to get the inherent ridiculousness of the franchise, playing it seriously without ever really taking it too seriously. I mean, you don't put a guy like David Dastmalchian in the role of M. Bison unless you expect him to do something with it, right?

Alas, it seems that this may be a real Tuesday, at least for my Street Fighter movie aspirations. The reviews are in, and they are not especially kind. Street Fighter isn't a complete catastrophe, according to the critical consensus, but I don't think JCVD has to worry about having to turn in his "Best Street Fighter Movie" trophy anytime soon, either.

Here's what they're saying:

"Dumber than a box of rocks, but have you ever thrown rocks at things? It can be pretty fun"

IGN: 6/10

The story is too thin to support its bloated roster, but IGN reckons the Street Fighter film is "all about landing as many punches as it can before the round timer hits zero. Even though there are plenty of misses, the ones it does manage to land hit hard."

"A garish and incoherent mess that amuses in fits and starts but barely improves on the Mortal Kombat movies before it"

The Guardian: 2/5

Fans might enjoy the new SF flick, and the performances are "likeable," but its repeated self-knowing acknowledgment of how silly it all is "would land better if the movie ever rose above the stuff it’s making fun of. Instead, Street Fighter is satisfied punching down on itself, and everything that’s cringe about the '90s, while happily being stuck there, in the past, so it could pretend that this is as good as it gets for videogame adaptations."

"Not a great adaptation of what is one of the most recognizable brands in all of gaming"

Collider: 6/10

"The movie is at its most fun when it truly locks in for those high-octane fights and the surprisingly beautiful and not-much-publicized animated sequences," Collider reviewer Aidan Kelley wrote. "Unfortunately, to get to those, you have to deal with a lot of exposition and unengaging character drama."

"One of the most overtly mixed bags of any movie this year"

ScreenRant: 7/10

Despite calling Street Fighter "a fundamentally flawed movie on an underlying storytelling level," ScreenRant's review is one of the more positive takes floating around out there: The film is "buoyed by the overall 'go for broke' tone" and director Kitao Sakurai's "great work helming the film, working with the cast and crew to deliver consistently entertaining fight scenes that are flush with personality and style."

"Like a trip to a ’90s mall arcade, Street Fighter’s pretty fun — for about 30 minutes"

ScreenCrush: 5/10

"The sheer absurdity and fevered intensity of the pacing, not to mention some very athletic fight choreography, is good enough to carry things along through the jittery first act," reviewer Matt Singer wrote for ScreenCrush. "But you can only mainline caffeine for so long before it starts to give you a headache."

"A campy '90s nostalgia ride and a complete mess"

Associated Press: 1/4

Street Fighter is a "very enthusiastic, weirdly convoluted and jumbled mess of a movie," Jake Coyle wrote for AP. As much as you might think a Street Fighter movie, good or bad, would at least offer up some bluntly entertaining hand-to-hand combat, it’s so messily plotted and chaotically conceived that it makes a game with six buttons seem comparatively artful."

"Dull fight scenes and tonal whiplash make this mostly forgettable videogame adaptation work only for superfans"

The Film Verdict

Street Fighter "is a little bit of everything that amounts to a lot of not-much," The Film Verdict declared, comparing it unfavorably to this year's Mortal Kombat and Resident Evil flicks: Street Fighter has all the elements that made those films successful, "but never lands on a formula than functions."

"I’m not sure Street Fighter meets any conventional standard of quality, but it’s undeniably its own thing"

The Wrap

This review takes a more holistic approach to Street Fighter, calling it "an action-packed, hyper-stylized, borderline-nonsensical fever dream with a central storyline that begs to be taken seriously" despite being goofy, horny, largely incoherent, and somehow "even weirder" than the 1990s movie. But hey, maybe that's your thing: As reviewer William Bibbiani wrote, "What even is a 'good movie' anyway?"

"A jumbled tonal mess that feels deadly serious one moment and like parody the next"

The Hollywood Reporter

"Featuring so many characters and elements from the games that non-aficionados are left desperately attempting to keep up, Street Fighter tries to thread the needle between fan service and welcoming the uninitiated," THR says. "The result is that neither camp is likely to be fully satisfied."

"Not even close to coherent, but it does have some good fight scenes"

Gizmodo

Gizmodo's review says the Street Fighter film is a bit like its portrayal of Ken Masters, an oafish clown who can actually fight: "The editing choices, scene transitions, and even the basic plot are frequently baffling. And yet, it can throw a punch when it wants to."

"The closest any filmmaker has come to bringing the franchise’s signature verve and bombast to the big screen"

Inverse

In another relatively positive review, Inverse declares that "Street Fighter might not be a film that sticks in your brain for days afterwards, but while you’re in your seat it feels like a shot of adrenaline to the arm, the kind that you might get from hearing the coveted 'You Win' announcement after the end of a hard-fought match."

"Something goes terribly awry in its back half, hinting at either a troubled production, or one that was doomed from the start"

Variety

Variety was impressed by Street Fighter's strong start, but says the wheels come off in the second half: "It’s a film at war with itself, in which a straightforward narrative about strained brotherhood is spread far too thin across unconnected snippets of action and comedy that grow increasingly disparate."

So there you have it: Not a disaster, but definitely a mess. We'll hopefully have our own critical take on the Street Fighter film up eventually, if we can ever talk Mollie Taylor into going to see it; in the meantime, if you've seen it, let us know what you think.