Bill Cosford

There are jokes in this story of a 7-year-old adoptee from Heck, but most of them are funny despite the clumsiness of their telling. The rest aren't funny at all. [1 Aug 1990, p.D7]

The film is cold, and despite the principals' considerable thrashings, utterly uninvolving. The overarching theme, gunplay notwithstanding, is tedium. [02 Jun 1989, p.5]

If the story were not already stupid and cynical, the casting would kill the film in any case. Garner is utterly lost as a top sergeant; he doesn't even swear well, and some of the movie's most uncomfortable moments are those in which he tries. [16 Mar 1984, p.D10]

Laughs are widely spaced, and hardly seem worth the trouble. [22 Apr 1985, p.D4]

Astoundingly, considering the fall of this film series from low aim to no aim at all, the original cast remains aboard. [8 Apr 1987, p.D8]

In New Jack City, director Mario Van Peebles seems determined to show that he can make a movie as shallow and violent as any white Hollywood hack. No problem: He did it. [8 Mar 1991, p.G12]

Smokey aims very low and still doesn't hit. [17 Aug 1983, p.D4]

The unfortunate aspect of Class, which is glossier than Private Lessons and marginally more believable than My Tutor, is that its laughs are built around the suffering of a prime candidate for intensive therapy. Thus while the kids are watching one movie -- boy loses virginity, ya-hoo -- adults in the audience will be watching another -- wife and mother has an emotional breakdown at the hands, literally, of a 14-year-old. The latter, of course, is not funny. [25 July 1983, p.C6]

A measure of redemption is offered in an opening montage and in the climactic bike-race sequence; in each, the stunts of the stand-ins are breathtaking. In all other respects Rad, which was directed by Hal Needham (a former stunt man who "directed" the Smokey and the Bandit series) is crudely made, the visual equivalent of a 10-speed with training wheels. [2 Apr 1986, p.D6]

Before it's done, Hello Mary Lou has touched most of the bases, flirting with taboos (incest, locker-room lesbianism, fingernails on the blackboard) and purloining effects from the Nightmare on Elm Street series. It's a badly made film, as awkward as can be, and long stretches of it make no sense whatsoever. Nor does it manage, as the better slasher films do, to re-create a high-school milieu of even passing authenticity. [21 Oct 1987, p.D5]

Mazursky never makes the case for his hero's disaffection, and Cassavetes is not one of those screen presences for whom we are willing to fill in the blanks. [24 Sep 1982, p.D2]

Unfortunately, The Corsican Brothers isn't very funny. This does not exactly make us nostalgic for other, less purposeful C- and-C films, but it does serve as a sad reminder that their first, Up in Smoke, for all its excesses, was funnier than anything they have been able to manage since. [30 July 1984, p.C5]

At heart, it is a Saturday- morning cartoon; the film might in fact have looked better as an animated feature. [30 Jun 1982, p.C6]

Honkytonk Man is Clint Eastwood's long, long ramble through the American Southwest in search of period, in search of character, in search of self-control. As a director, at least, he never finds the latter -- among the many things wrong with his latest film is that he apparently could not bring himself to slice away any of the flab. [22 Dec 1982, p.D18]

The Search for Spock should be great fun for Trek fans; it's splendid junk when it works. But if you can't hum the theme from memory, Trek III is likely to be just another way to kill two hours. [1 June 1984, p.D1]

Footloose is for an audience that wants something easy to think about, a conflict in which the two sides are easy to distinguish and an "enemy" who is easy to look down upon. It's for the folks who like to skip dinner and go right to the cream- filled finale, and though not quite evil, it's as silly as can be. [1 Mar 1984, p.D12]

Part II is even dumber than Meatballs, which was plenty dumb enough. [01 Aug 1984, p.C4]

Operative marketing concept: There are thousands, not just one, born every minute. [5 Aug 1986, p.B5]

It's all as foolish as can be, and tedious in the bargain. The Clan of the Cave Bear acts as a parody of the earlier, more accomplished Quest for Fire, but since even that film was funny despite itself, this is not much of an accomplishment. On the evidence, it is hard to tell which way Hannah, who was Ron Howard's mermaid in Splash, is traveling on the old evolutionary ladder. [27 Man 1986, p.C6]

The Dungeonmaster is a low-budget fantasy from 1984 on which no less than seven directors labored, and in vain. Each of the seven took one "sequence" in a series of ill-explained jousts between a computer wizard and a caped character called Mestema, who turns out to be Satan himself. Each of the "sequences" is uniformly shoddy looking. [14 Aug 1985, p.D5]

It is surprisingly dull...Sheen and Sweeney appear dazed, or merely bored, throughout, as if they had ODd on the film's determined sleekness. The director, Peter Werner, is best known for his work on installments of Moonlighting. Alas, his TV roots are showing, and No Man's Land seems like nothing so much as a "special, two-hour episode" from the little screen. [29 Oct 1987, p.7]

Despite some clever stunts and Varney's energetic persona-recycling, Ernest Goes to Camp, which was directed by the same man who makes the Ernest commercials, requires heroic patience for those much over 12. [25 May 1987, p.C8]

To be fair, it must be acknowledged that there is a spectacular decapitation in the film's very first scene, and a couple of head-bashings later on, and these are enough to jolt one awake. But most of the film is so flatfooted that one longs for the batterings of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre or at least the campy excesses of Fright Night. [14 Oct 1985, p.C6]

It's a dreadful bore. [23 July 1993, p.G5]

Lester's film is so clearly about getting even rather than about troubled youth or any other societal problem that it seems, like Death Wish II and a hundred others, a waste of that energy. [16 Nov 1982, p.B4]

There's a delightfully promising premise behind Halloween III -- something's wrong with the kids' masks -- but somehow Wallace gets sidetracked, and the movie wanders away. [30 Oct 1982, p.D5]

Only the quips aren't funny. Not much about the script is amusing at all. Worse, the director, Herbert Ross, who once had a reputation for grace, has been growing clumsier for years and now seems to have lost his timing. [14 Sept 1993, p.E6]

Hershey isn't bad in the role of the victim; she looks durable and acts like a survivor. And Furie does throw in a couple of nifty scares between the rapes, which are gratuitous and disturbing. The rest of the film is by-the-numbers B-movie thriller. [09 Feb 1983, p.D6]