Metacritic reviews

Wyatt Earp's attempts to cover so many years lead to too many scenes with little emotional power. The film doesn't shoot blanks, and it is better than Tombstone, but, considering the names involved, a little disappointment isn't out of the question.

As a mindless popcorn shootout, Wyatt Earp is highly watchable. But this three-hour drama, starring Kevin Costner as the straight-shooting marshal, takes its time sliding out of the saddle.

Tedious Western, that's a disappointment given the talent involved.

It's a rambling, unfocused biography of Wyatt Earp, starting when he's a kid and following his development from an awkward would-be lawyer into a slick gunslinger. This is a long journey, in a three-hour film that needs better pacing.

It all comes off as too sketchy and too obvious, and after 90 minutes, we're bloated with incidents but still hungry for satisfying drama.

This is standard plot material in most respects, and Kasdan has done little to make it seem new. Fans of time-tested formulas may applaud his fidelity to the genre, but others will wish he'd come up with a few original notions to energize this very long picture.

This strenuously dark biographical Western plays more like a choppy, self-important miniseries.

Yet a film that tries so hard to offer intelligent entertainment too often forgets to entertain. The famous showdown in Tombstone...one of the most famous scenes in all of Western legend is anti-climactic.

Running beyond three hours, the movie more than overstays its welcome, and despite some vague genuflections in the general direction of The Godfather regarding family ties and revenge, there are simply too many years and locations covered, too many crane shots and rainstorms.

Wyatt Earp drones past its logical conclusion, which is, of course, the great shoot-out. Since Earp's life uninstructively limped along after that event, so must the movie, further abusing our overtaxed patience and undertaxed intelligence.