"To me, this feels as if I've been watching an episode of...I don't know... 24 in which Steve Bell's monkey version of George Bush is having high level discussions with David Palmer. (...) (I)f it turned out that the writers thought that a cartoon chimpanzee fitted in perfectly well with 24 (...) then you'd probably stop watching. Particularly if the director said: "Oh, what does it matter if one character is realistic and the other is a cartoon monkey. It makes for a fun scene. No-one expects this kind of thing to make sense, and the ratings are good. Go away, you mosquito, or I shall swat you from my superior vantage point."
Soap, the iconic late '70s sitcom, had a tendency to flip-flop between satirizing soap operas and just being one, with its sprawling storylines about love affairs, amnesia, and murder.
— Cracked
"[Director John] McTiernan never seems comfortable with the film’s satirical elements, so he delivers what he imagines audiences want: a straightforward Schwarzenegger vehicle that’s maybe 15 percent more knowing, comic, and self-referential than its star’s usual blood-splattered fare. … it’s a “feathered fish” that doesn’t quite belong in the action or comedy realm."
"When a suave British secret agent, who's definitely not James Bond, trains a young protege to definitely not become the next James Bond, supervised by an old authority figure who's definitely not M, and helped by a gadget wizard who's definitely not Q, to fight a bald super-villain in a mountain lair who's definitely not Blofeld, the only way to convince you that you're not watching an actual James Bond movie is to constantly remind you that you're not."
"True Lies can't seem to decide of it's an overblown, yet serious action movie or if it's a straight-up parody. It's much more convincing with the former, because James Cameron has his talents, but writing and directing comedy isn't one of them."
— CinemaSins on True Lies
