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The wait for Ender's Game will soon be coming to end as the movie adaptation of Orson Scott Card's novel hits theaters on Friday, Nov. 1.

The story revolves around a gifted boy drafted into military school in an apocalyptic future where the first order of business is defending the planet against a coming alien invasion.

The film, directed by Gavin Hood, boasts an all-star cast that includes Harrison Ford, Asa Butterfield (as Ender), Ben Kingsley, Hailee Steinfeld, Viola Davis and Abigail Breslin.

Here's a sampling of what the critics are saying...

PHOTOS: Movie premiere pandemonium

• "The adaptation is a shallow sci-fi spectacle that almost makes you care," writes the Hollywood Reporter's Marc Bernardin.

• "Against considerable odds, this risky-sounding Orson Scott Card adaptation actually works," notes Peter Debruge of Variety. "Like The Hunger Games...[it] peddles the unseemly idea of watching kids thrust into life-and-death situations, but also takes responsibiilty for their actions."

• "Yet another intriguing, complex, strangely unlikeable big-budget experiment destined to thrill the fans and befuddle the rest of us," states Time Out's Tom Huddleston.

• "Took 28 years to get to the screen, but the end result feels rushed and hasty," offers Eric D. Snider of Film.com.

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• "Ender's Game truly captures the spirit and intensity of what is one of the most popular sci-fi stories of all time," Tony Hicks of the San Jose Mercuy News shares. "Considering the weighty source material and complex, sprawling story line with which director/screenwriter Gavin Hood was working, Ender's Game...couldn't have made its translation from page to screen much more convincingly."

• "Hood's film is thankfully more successful than his last Hollywood outing X-Men Origins: Wolverine, but for all its lofty ambitions it never qute fulfills its potential," opines Digital Spy's Simon Reynolds.

• "Successfully translates most of the book's more pertinent themes to the screen, while making enough storytelling fumbles to hint why it was considered unfilmable for nearly three decades," writes Richard Edwards of SFX Magazine.

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