Metacritic reviews

It's a crowdpleaser -- at least for crowds aged about 6 to 12.

Feig does wring out a few fleeting fun/heartfelt moments from the minors, and the movie's Christmas treacle is smoother than "Santa Clause 3's." But anyone old enough to go see this without a parent or guardian will have seen it all before.

Black's apoplectic fits and sardonic rants are strictly a bonus for the parents dragged along for the adolescent shenanigans.

A little charm and inventiveness would have gone a long way to tone down some of the picture's more obnoxious impulses.

The film is too busy hurling its cast from one labored slapstick setpiece to another to loosen up and allow them to have fun or be spontaneous.

Not for the faint of heart, the movie is unsettling and startlingly true to life. At least that’s how it seemed to me. To the minors I happened to be accompanying, it seemed to be reasonably good fun.

Anyone who has ever actually been stuck in a terminal with rowdy youngsters will not likely choose to pay money to revisit that experience on-screen.

Unaccompanied Minors isn't likely to become a frequent flyer but it could strike a chord among children of divorce for many holiday seasons to come.

Unaccompanied Minors, a sort of junior league version of "The Breakfast Club," never achieves the universal appeal of John Hughes's 1985 film about youth and authority.

If the writers had the guts (and the jokes) to fashion a bittersweet comedy with a fully earned happy ending, Unaccompanied Minors probably wouldn't have been made. As is, it's a prefab slapstick-'n'-pathos stew that doesn't taste like anything.