Cody Clark

The movie is more or less competent for being what it is. Of course, I could say the same of most brick walls -- but I'd hardly recommend that you pay eight bucks to sit in front of one for two hours.

Has its share of small pleasures.

Because so little of what occurs on-screen either engages or entertains, there's ample time for the boiler of your self-respect to build up quite a head of indignation at the forfeiture of your time, money, and (exceedingly minimal) cerebral exertion.

This wretched jumbo helping of Christian Fundamentalist agitprop takes itself entirely too seriously to be anything but ploddingly dull.

Thinking (logically or otherwise) about this movie is a waste of your brain cells.

This saga of one robot's determined quest to become human is so coldly calculated it could give you frostbite.

If Company Man were a wreck on the interstate, it would involve multiple cars and at least one jackknifed tanker truck, and traffic would be backed up for miles as passing motorists slow to gawk.

Even if the antic futility of attempting to get an entire shtetl to pull together in the face of genocide is your idea of a day at the races, don't laugh too hard -- the out-of-nowhere ending will make you choke on every chuckle.

Whatever the amount on Roth's paycheck was, it's the only truly charmed sum Lucky Numbers has to offer.

If you can overlook its condescending wholesomeness and static, visually drab, endlessly repetitious animation, then you have a more forgiving soul than I do.

None of the movie's abundant humor is better than faintly amusing.

An empty reminder that Martin Lawrence can be pretty funny, in a spastic, loose-limbed way -- maybe next time he'll get a worthwhile script.

So wretched that it practically defies description.

If you're desperate for a James Bond fix, skip the movie and blow your 007 bucks on a copy of the soundtrack.

Gamer geeks, I speak your language! And I warn you: Flee! Or, at the very least, crank down any expectations you harbor -- a few notches below "zero" should do it -- before buying a ticket.

As though fatalistically compelled, all three leads self-destruct: Li is as flat, colorless, and stiff as a panel of Sheetrock, Karyo plays his every syllable in overdrive, and Fonda seems trapped in the midst of a failed screen test for Pretty Woman II.

It's a gleefully unfettered gross-a-thon first --also second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth -- and a movie perhaps seventh.

Fuhgeddaboutit.

Once the action starts to kick in, Megiddo morphs, minute by minute and scene by scene, into a Mystery Science Theater smorgasbord.

None, repeat, none of this is funny.

Dreadful demonic disaster.

An early scene inside a theater seems intended to wink at Sin's critics: "Disgusting! Cheap melodrama," a lady sniffs during intermission. It's a neatly reflexive acknowledgement of what we ourselves are watching, but even at that, our filmmaker is praising himself too extravagantly by half.

It has no subtlety, no shadings, and no suspense, and might as well not have a screenplay.

As for genuine willies, well, chances are you've had more disturbing encounters with, say, a belligerent Shih Tzu.

Dracula 2000 is a stake in the heart.

Beautiful it ain't, but it is kind of cute.