Bill Cosford

The Hotel New Hampshire, in which John Irving's novel comes to the screen, is such a mess that it does not feel like a film at all. It's a kind of endurance contest, an epic bout with the cutes, in which the audience is made to confront a long, quirky line of performers playing oddball "types," and is then given only a handful of platitudes by which the explain the experience. "Sorrow floats" is the story's most profound statement, though there are others. [3 Apr 1984, p.C5]

Implausibly, irretrievably boring -- an affront to its undemanding genre. [28 March 1983, p.C6]

It's hard to figure how the combination of director Carl Reiner, comedian John Candy and a movie with the title Summer Rental could come to nothing. [10 Aug 1985, p.D7]

Cage plays his part in exactly the mode of the maimed swain of Moonstruck -- his voice is flat, his jaw slack, his eyes glazed over. He knows it's junk, and he just can't help himself. [26 May 1990, p.E1]

My Chauffeur has moments of pure daffiness, unhinged stuff. But it is also the most ineptly made comedy in years, so badly made that it is ultimately unwatchable. [20 March 1986, p.B6]

Though My Tutor contains many scenes meant to provide comic relief, there is only one that works: Hired to deflower Bobby in the early going, the local drive-in slattern is caught flagrante delicto in a well-used backseat by her fiancee, the leader of a motorcycle gang. "He hates it when I do this," she says to Bobby, and one wants to love this movie...Otherwise, alas, My Tutor is witless. It seems to take forever for Bobby to learn to conjugate, and he's pretty slow at French, too. As for the double standard, note that simple role reversal -- older man deflowering teenage girl -- produces not a softcore sex comedy, but a crime drama. And that's a different genre altogether. [23 May 1983, p.6]

When The Guardian isn't goofy, it's as dull as plywood and just as thin. [01 May 1990, p.C4]

Oscar, the new Stallone vehicle, is dreadful for an hour or so, then merely bad. By the time it's bearable, the picture is almost over. And by the time it's over, no regrets. [26 Apr 1991, p.G5]

Electric Dreams seems to take forever to establish its premise and its characters, who (computer excepted) are nonetheless rather one-dimensional. [23 Jul 1984, p.C6]

The film is even slower and less engaging than is standard for its undistinguished genre. [22 Nov 1983, p.B5]

Mulcahy has style to burn, but he may well have used the script to light it, for Highlander almost never makes any sense. [11 Mar 1986, p.B4]

It was pretty interesting a couple of years ago, too, when a variation of it was the premise for The Final Countdown. The big difference is that the earler film wasn't bad, and this one is. [03 Aug 1984, p.C9]

Parts of The Bodyguard are inadvertently hilarious, as in a romantic encounter involving Houston, Costner and a samurai sword (she unsheathes it so very, very carefully). Others just seem to go on, and on, and on -- at two hours and five minutes, this one is easily a half-hour too long. [25 Nov 1992, p.E4]

The Last Boy Scout is a perfect example of what's wrong with Hollywood. The problem is the script, which is awful. [13 Dec 1991, p.G5]

The story is thick with implausibilities and, like the source, almost unbelievably turgid in the telling. [20 Nov 1987, p.B5]

The ghoulies in question are at least momentarily diverting, which is more than can be said for the rest of their movie. [26 May 1985, p.C6]

Ricochet would be utterly unremarkable (in the small universe of violent and atmospheric cop dramas that make no sense) were it not for the cast, which includes some A players. [07 Oct 1991, p.C1]

Ballard made The Black Stallion and Never Cry Wolf, and he's good with spectacle;: His second-unit crew this time found ways to shoot the controlled violence of big sails in good wind that take the breath away. But the rest of Wind is just out there flapping. What a mess. [14 Sep 1992, p.C5]

The performances -- even those by Rosanna Arquette and Jeff Bridges, as Sarah and Scudder -- are simply trashy; they're throwaway stuff. [30 Apr 1986, p.C7]

Hot Dog...The Movie! involves soft-core quickies and schoolyard one-liners and is not much fun at all. [14 Jan 1984, p.C7]

My Favorite Year moves from bad joke to bad joke, but it does move. [08 Oct 1982, p.D9]

Porky's Revenge is just what you'd think it is, only not as good. And folks, when a filmmaker promises a cheap, quick and dirty sex comedy and can't deliver, that's disappointment. [26 March 1985, p.D5]

The most remarkable failure of the film is that the principals don't seem even to like each other very much, despite their habit of facing the future arm in arm. There's a lot of cute flesh up on the screen, signifying nothing. [28 June 1985, p.D1]

A Kiss Before Dying is nothing if not devious. But it's also a textbook example of incompetent direction. [29 Apr 1991, p.C5]

Craven packs routine teen-confrontation material into the plot as filler, and still has trouble getting to 90 minutes. His ending is contrived and nonsensical even by the standards of the form. [14 Oct 1986, p.B7]

Witless and dull, Penelope Spheeris' feature-length hillbilly saga is the product of no less than four screenwriters. It's scary to think what it might have been like had it been written by only one or two of them -- I mean, what does a half-joke sound like? [15 Oct 1993, p.G5]

A movie about lunatics with chainsaws that is neither funny nor frightening. [25 Aug 1986, p.C5]

A film that has too little to entertain grownups, and perhaps too much for children. It's a blunder. [21 Dec 1983, p.C8]