Caryn James

The very best I can say is that Witchboard should encourage struggling film makers. Watch it and think, ''I can do better than that!''

Despite a few lighter touches, the film is still a gory waste of time that plays its murders for all the blood and guts they're worth. There are plenty of cliched reaction shots of faces in terror, more than enough frames filled with bloody knives and severed heads. There is not, however, any suspense about Jason or his victims. He stalks, they scream, he kills. None of it is enough to make you jump out of your seat, though it may be enough to make your stomach churn. [2 Aug 1986, p.9]

There have been worse ideas for innocuous summer films, but not many worse executions. The slapstick is tame and predictable. The characters and their inspirational message are served up as neatly - there's no avoiding this - as if they were in commercials.

Hot Pursuit is just what you'd expect from such a stale formula: a misadventure in paradise that makes ''Gilligan's Island'' look like ''The Night of the Iguana.''

This is the old, old trading places gag, and while a good idea can always be reinvented, invention is precisely what Taking Care of Business lacks.

Child's Play 3, directed by Jack Bender, misses the sharpness and dark humor that the director and co-writer Tom Holland brought to the original.

It might have helped if the film makers had had the humor to see they were turning out ''Teen-Age Mutant Ninja Seals.'' As it is, they take their explosives and their silly roles much too seriously.

Chris Weitz (most famously About a Boy and most recently Operation Finale) works hard to make Afraid a smarter-than-average horror movie, but the effort is conspicuous, and in the end the film is bland and obvious. And if horror can’t make us feel frightened in a way we couldn’t imagine ourselves, why bother?

Directed with pedestrian competence by Thaddeus O’Sullivan, The Miracle Club is about secrets that are all too obvious, and forgiveness you can see coming from the start.

Lorraine Gary has some affecting moments as Ellen, but Jaws the Revenge is mild and predictable, the very things an adventure movie should never be.

A film that assumes it's up to the job of dealing with life and death and love, but is not even up to dealing with lobsters.

Both Mr. Danson and Mr. Culkin make the film's predictable ending far more effective than it might have been. They are warm without being sappy. It's too bad that the audience, parents and children, are likely to have grown restless long before then.

An uninspired circus film for children.

The didactic screenplay sinks the film. Instead of exploring characters, or having them spout witty lines, Ting has them explain everything to each other, out loud, almost all the time. ... It’s great to see more films with Asian and Asian-American actors and stories, especially one written and directed by a woman. But while Ting’s movie may be heartfelt, it offers viewers more fluff than heart.

Comprised of so many derivative bits and pieces that it's not surprising the movie has too little narrative coherence or momentum to keep us going, and no characters we care about enough to root for.

Noisy and meant for children only. A bored grown-up's only consolation is that the Rangers' popularity has probably peaked, and the next kiddie phenomenon must be on the way.

The best that can be said about When I’m a Moth is that it is not lurid, although it does seem pointless.

Sluggish and low-energy.

What has been lost is more than Bogart's gritty presence.

The New Blood only wishes it had something really new to add to the formula...There is a lot less blood, less screaming, less energy in this installment, as if Jason has become rather bored with his job.

It isn't [Hanks's] fault that the five writers don't come up with five funny lines or one exciting scene.

Banality is precisely the problem with Shirley Valentine, the one-woman stage play that has been turned into a misguided, fully cast film.

The acting is stiff, the dialogue is stiffer and the action scenes are laborious. Even the presence of professionals like Sheree North and Richard Roundtree, in small roles, tend to diminish them rather than improve the film.

Their best moments are some throwaway routines; they weep in the car as they sing along to the Carpenters' "Superstar." More often, the movie goes for stale, obvious sight gags like Tommy's slow destruction of Richard's precious car. As mismatched-buddy teams go, Felix and Oscar have nothing to worry about here.

This misadventure of a project is a blip on the actresses’ résumés.

With its cardboard family and familiar aliens, MAC and Me would seem like the generic version of E. T. if it were not so full of brand-name commercials.

With a predictable trajectory and cringeworthy metaphors, The Starling is so slushily sentimental it makes the typical tearjerker look like a noir. Despite the lived-in performances from its three high-profile stars, this attempt at heartfelt drama is hopelessly by-the-numbers.

But mostly the satire is as dated as the recruiters' plaid jackets, as lame as the Johnny Walker joke.