Allison Benedikt

Parker is pretty much a disaster here, shrill and phony and, worst of all, spineless. She reminded me of Tea Leoni in "Spanglish," her performance working against the movie, serving only as a cumbersome, opaque obstacle.

This is the kind of movie that nice people call ambitious. Let's just leave it at that.

I'll describe the central characters in Disney's new ice-skating flick, Ice Princess, and you guess the plot.

Moments of this film reminded me of Alexander Payne's great library of male dysfunction -- "Election," "About Schmidt," "Sideways" -- not because King of the Corner actually reaches Payne's plane, but because I wish it had tried.

It's hollow.

Gere and Binoche are both terribly miscast--one far too charismatic, the other far too dowdy, which is something for Juliette Binoche. And the spelling bees? Dull. Dreary.

Michael Showalter is a funny man, but … how to put this gently … not a funny movie star.

Though the film has a plot a simpleton could follow, its hallmark is confusion. Its sense of time and place and its point of view are muddled. [13 Oct 1989, p.L]

For awhile, the stately symphonic score, urbane setting and understated dress make Birth feel powerful--until it feels empty, lacking what Glazer so furiously exhibited in his equally stylized freshman endeavor: heart.

Just doesn't have the same zing.

Mindless, predictable and mildly entertaining.

I guess there's something progressive going on when a lesbian love story gets to be just as dreadful and tacky as most straight ones.

A poor man's "When Harry Met Sally."

Only resonates when he (Brooks) strips it all away and focuses on parent and child.

A mostly bland, sporadically crude, by-the-numbers romantic comedy about two gay men in love.

This is familiar clowning territory for our actors -- hypothetically well-matched here, with Carrey a far more sophisticated and energetic comic partner for Leoni than Adam Sandler was in "Spanglish."

A huge waste of talent (Witherspoon's) and time (ours), a supernatural romantic comedy that is neither romantic, comedic, super or natural.

But alas, even with young talent, director Roger Kumble and writer Adam Davis rely way too heavily (no pun intended) on the fat-suit joke and titular impasse.

It's a cute romantic comedy, just as Shakespeare intended.

A childish and visually repetitive movie, ham-fisted, proselytizing and overtly simplified.

Mad props to Peter Zuccarini, who headed the team of ocean-bound photographers and captured some remarkably vivid footage, and also to the actors, who spend plenty of time looking cool, calm and collected swimming with the predatory fishes.

It's all neat and sweet and one-dimensional, more the moral to a story than a story.

The trouble with Bridget redux is also simple: Thai jail.

Endearing but predictable.

Ingenious with his use of music and hypnotic pacing, Winterbottom keeps us in his world as usual. But this time that world feels ever more gratuitous, meandering and puzzling, with sex that's less and less authentic even though it's real.

So what started as a female "Agent Cody Banks" happily and seamlessly becomes so much more, with style and substance existing in unusual harmony for a spy spoof.

Cherot shot G on a tight schedule, but instead of this age-old indie predicament generating a certain scrappy passion, the film just looks cheap.

Maybe if Mindel had focused more on his characters, less on the silly "noir" trickery, his film would do Garity justice. As it is, go find better work, kid.