Caryn James

With the best material used up, That's Entertainment! III cleverly focuses on outtakes, unfinished numbers and behind-the-scenes glimpses of the old musicals. This results in a lively and funny compilation of curiosities suggesting what might have been.

Major League trots out the standard formula, but has the wit to make fun of it now and then. The film is so loopy that it glides over its cliches and indulges in some congenial movie-baseball silliness.

A superficial and sporadically witty piece aimed at such easy targets as family squabbles, small-town folk and beauty contests. The film is not actively awful; just dull and banal. [28 Apr 1989, p.C12]

Flight of the Navigator may not have the originality of a true classic; and while its special effects provide some dazzling moments, they are not quite fresh enough to be brilliant. But the film is so absorbing, such constant fun, that it may well be the best family film around.

Though the script for Hellbound is related to the Barker story, the film drops its plot whenever a fake-looking monster walks on the screen. Ogling strange creatures is the film's true reason for being.

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.

It is a dark, lurid revenge fantasy and not the breakthrough, star-making movie some people have claimed. But it is a genre film of a high order, stylish and smooth.

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 is a competent, occasionally witty genre piece that never tries to be anything more.

But (Jason) will never change and never die, not while cheap, dull ax-murder movies can yield one witty, misleading, probably lucrative commercial.

Julie Bovasso as Mr. Alda's Italian mother and Joe Pesci as his sleazy brother-in-law infuse their roles with as much life as possible, but they can't overcome the dullness of Mr. Alda's wedding.

Anyone old enough to have a license is probably much too old to be amused by License to Drive. Though the plot and action never get better than a television movie of the week, the engaging cast brings much more style to the material than it deserves. [06 July 1988, p.C17]

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.

Flatliners is a stylish, eerie psychological horror film laced with wit, a movie that thrives on its characters' guilty secrets and succeeds on the strength of the director Joel Schumacher's flair for just this sort of smart, unpretentious entertainment.

Mr. Romero, who adapted the screenplay from Michael Stewart's novel, wraps up more loose ends than anyone cares about, yet leaves some nagging bits of illogic.

Their appeal as a couple of gorgeous outlaws is the main reason to see this sleek, entertaining remake of Sam Peckinpah's 1972 action film.

Candy Mountain...seems to be a small, quirky film, but it easily assumes the weight, ambition and success that many larger films aim for and miss.

What emerges is an amazingly fresh visual immersion in space, and a film that works far better when dealing with inanimate objects than with humans.

Stephen Frears's film is always lively and often shrewd, but in the end Hero is at war with itself. The movie's Capraesque heart is locked in battle with its cynical, contemporary brain.

Darkman sustains mild interest throughout, but it never takes off, partly because a real-estate scam, gangland shootouts, city corruption and a love story clutter up the sad story of Westlake's strange mutation.

Major Payne takes about an hour and 10 minutes before it wallows in sappiness. That's not a bad record for a formula family comedy in which the ending is clear from the start.

Mr. Greenaway turns this tale of a bullying criminal and his unfaithful wife into something profound and extremely rare: a work so intelligent and powerful that it evokes our best emotions and least civil impulses, so esthetically brilliant that it expands the boundaries of film itself.

In the end, Now and Then doesn't work well enough as nostalgia for adults or as a story that girls today might identify with. Yet its young ensemble makes it vibrant and enjoyable, even when it fails to surprise.

The film is lively and detailed enough so it is never boring, but it never takes off dramatically or realizes its intriguing possibilities either.

It is a quirky, ambitious, praiseworthy project that somehow becomes a victim of all the cliches it was invented to avoid.

Loosely based on the legend that inspired "Swan Lake," and blatantly borrowing the formula of Disney's "Beauty and the Beast," this animated musical turns out to be funny and enchanting on its own. Directed by Richard Rich, who started an animation company after 14 years at Disney, "The Swan Princess" makes first-rate copying seem like a good idea.

Little Odessa might have been a great film. Instead, it is an exceptionally good one, the kind that suggests the start of a powerful career.

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.