Metacritic reviews

An across-the-board delight featuring a spot-on ensemble cast that treats the most awkward and embarrassing moments in the rites of passage with affectionate hilarity.

Tilting between a teen sex comedy and a more sensitive tale about male bonding, The Wood is too anxious to please to quite make up its mind what it is.

A pleasant but relatively inconsequential movie.

This rambling and episodic autobiographical saga of three friends coming of age in Inglewood, Calif. (aka The Wood) in the '80s is so determined to be likable that it forgets to be interesting.

What feels genuine in the film -- mother-son bonds, the wedding party -- is surrounded by overdetermined and formulaic scenes lifted from other films.

Despite the unforced humor and honesty in the performances of its young and talented cast, The Wood spends too much time wallowing in arrested adolescence to make you feel you've traveled anywhere.

The picture, directed by Rick Famuyiwa, becomes a juggling act, contrasting the efforts of the three grown-up buddies to get to a wedding on time, with flashbacks of their youth.

Unspools slowly and erratically without ever hitting an emotional or comedic stride.

Nostalgia has no real point to make here. All that Famuyiwa can hope to accomplish is to tell his story well. In this area he is less than competent.

Unfortunately for Epps, Diggs and Jones -- three capable actors -- the disjointed direction of the material robs them of any dimension and forces them to play tail-chassing caricatures.