Metacritic reviews

Payne is played in the movie by Damon Wayans, in the best work he's done since the inspired "In Living Color" TV series.

While Major Payne is too predictable for most adults, it's an ideal entertainment for youthful audiences that allows Damon Wayans to be at his best in a dream part.

The hero's hilarious efforts to become an ROTC commander at a Virginia prep school are more than enough ammunition for this riotous military parody.

It’s relatively foolproof light entertainment, undone only when it strays too far into the absurd or wears the mantle of Wayans’ comedy persona.

Major Payne takes about an hour and 10 minutes before it wallows in sappiness. That's not a bad record for a formula family comedy in which the ending is clear from the start.

Predictable and ultimately saccharine, but occasionally enlivened by Wayans's rather vicious comic sensibility.

What there is here is Damon Wayans ripping up the screen -- which is entertaining but doesn't go far enough -- but this film really isn't about anything else. My 4 1/2 year old cracked up at the butt jokes but doesn't know what “turd” means so he missed much of the verbal humor.

This fumbling and formulaic semiremake of The Private War of Major Benson (1955) is basically just an excuse to let comic Damon Wayans—functioning here as cowriter and executive producer as well as star—strut his stuff. But he's strutting in a void, and not even two gold teeth will light his way. The initial premise [is] good for a couple of laughs at most.

It’s an unmitigated nightmare of crude, boorish tripe-and woe unto our nation’s future if kids find it hilarious.

A cynically made, painfully long comedy without a single laugh. It's a film to really make you wonder about Damon Wayans ' abilities as a comic actor.