ChicDragon It's a mild crowd pleaser for people who are exhausted by blockbusters.

Numerootno A story that's too fascinating to pass by...

Motompa Go in cold, and you're likely to emerge with your blood boiling. This has to be seen to be believed.

Sabah Hensley This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

SnoopyStyle Charlie Thurber (Luke Wilson) is a teacher at Grey College looking to get tenure in a few months. His students like him but he needs to publish. His Bigfoot-obsessed friend Jay Hadley (David Koechner) fails to get tenure. He's a disappointment to his Princeton professor father (Bob Gunton) in retirement living. His sister Margaret (Sasha Alexander) wants him to pay his share for their father. He calls Beth (Rosemarie DeWitt) on a TV charity drive trying to start a relationship over the phone. Then the school hires Yale English grad Elaine Grasso (Gretchen Mol) to be on the same tract as Charlie.Charlie is a bit too pathetic which gets a little tiresome. He would be funnier if he's darker. Luke Wilson needs to get some edge. Koechner is trying to be funny. The students don't have any big standout. This comedy feels a little incomplete. It's not dark enough to be a black comedy. It's not odd enough to be quirky. It's just not quite funny enough.

Chrysanthepop Mike Million's 'Tenure' gives the impression that it's a university campus comedy. I found the premise refreshing and appealing. The problem is that the comedy parts are just not that funny and Million tries too much to make it quirky funny to the point that it backfires as he goes way over the top and tumbles down.I found the Jay Hadley character very annoying and not to be a very believable professor. The Rosemarie DeWitt track also felt out-of-place. The movie should have just stayed focused on the key character Charlie Thurber. Many people of his age would be able to relate to what he's going through. I liked the Million avoids clichés in places. For example, the Teacher's pet sequence was well done.On the technical side, the score is pretty good and the camera captures the simplicity and beauty of the location. The woods and countryside are nice to look at. The pacing is very slow, especially at the beginning. Luke Wilson is terrific. His restrained performance as Charlie makes the character all the more real. And if this film is worth watching then it's mostly because of him. David Koechner does his best with an ill-written character. Gretchen Mol is cute and likable. Sasha Alexander is wasted.Overall, it's not as bad as many reviewers have made it out to be but it could have easily been a lot better.

RobertR Kirschten If there is an academy award category for the most tedious movie ever written, "Tenure" should win in a landslide. The story centers on a boring, nontenured professor at a small college, coming up for promotion, who can't get his articles published. I understand why. This man has no discernible talent of any kind--no wit, no intellectual skills, no insight into much of anything. Why we should find him interesting is beyond me. The movie "says" he is a good teacher, but after more than a quarter of a century of teaching, I can't find anything he does in class that illuminates either students or subject matter. A few moments in the movie are droll: the goofy Bigfoot stuff, the crazy woman professor's complaint about the toilet seat, and the professor's father in the retirement home. The love story--is there one?-- between the prof and the new hire is undeveloped and shallow. The main character is passive, depressing, and utterly without passion. Even the secondary characters are dull. Does the professor get tenure in the end? Who cares? Acting is fine. Script = D+.

tburick I am not going to bash this movie as many have done... I saw the movie, and was think I set the bar too high. Without giving away too much of the movie, I found that the acting was good, the story was different from a "bottled, formulaic, Animal House-ish" rewrite college comedy.It was smart, clever, and told a good tale, there was only a small amount of unanswered questions I had in my mind when it ended... I stared at the screen and said... "OK...it wasn't awful, it was .... well OK"The bottom line is, I am not going to say it was a horrible movie, because it was not... I found that I was entertained by the movie, and they did not try to market it as a blockbuster.. A decent film, and not too far removed from what it was about.. trying to get tenure at a College.