David Sterritt

Amiably bland actors can be fun to watch, as Tom Hanks has proved. Freeman is no Hanks, though, and The Hitchhiker's Guide won't boost anyone's career into hyperspace. Or give your mind a workout.

The movie is a mish-mash of action-adventure clichés, book-ended with lame attempts at psychological interest. Written, directed, and acted with ham-fisted heaviness.

Like the recent "Mona Lisa Smile," this tale could have been an effective feminist fable if it weren't so calculated.

Bataille was a serious philosopher as well as a sensation-seeking writer, but you'd never guess his provocative ideas from this updated version.

By the time it ended, I'd stopped caring. I suspect most moviegoers will do the same. Here's hoping Shelton scurries back to the athletic world in a hurry.

At 225 minutes long, it feels like a trilogy in itself. That wouldn't be a problem if it had energy and imagination, but those qualities are missing, as is any sense of historical or philosophical context.

The consequences aren't remotely as comic as they're meant to be.

The story takes place in 2013, but you'd hardly know it from the age-old clichés Kevin Costner purloins to tell this overblown action yarn, which relies so heavily on ideas borrowed from John Ford westerns that the Hollywood giant should have been credited as codirector; too bad Costner can't invest them with Ford's kind of life and originality, though.

The infuriating thing about XXX isn't that it delivers thrills and spills to moviegoers who don't know any better, but that its Hollywood hype reinforces the notion that brain-dead entertainment is what movies are all about.

Daft, excessive, boring.

It's picaresque, all right, but full of ethnic stereotypes, and filmed much too blandly to compete with the superb ''Black Stallion'' of a few years ago.

De Niro and Hoffman almost give comic life to this brainless, vulgar farce.

Most of the characters are one-dimensional, and Avary's over-the-top directing doesn't make them interesting for more than a few isolated moments.

Was this spiritless stuff really directed by Paul and Chris Weitz of "American Pie" fame? How the rebels have mellowed!

Paying homage to drug comedies of the '70s, Half Baked is high on getting high and low on laughs.

The plot is a shameless plea for vigilante violence, and the dignity of the black hero is outweighed by the ethnically marked evil of his Hispanic antagonist. Beneath its crisp veneer, much of the movie is a high-energy hymn to hate.

Lachow goes for cuteness and whimsy every chance he gets, missing a lot more often than he hits.

The picture goes for sentimentality rather than substance every chance it gets, and the cast falls right into its syrupy trap.

Stoner jokes, awful gags, and just stupid stuff equate to one bad movie.

Humans, it seems, weren't meant to tamper with some things. This picture makes you wonder if cinema is one of them. [14 Nov 1986, p.27]

The movie means well, but neither its emotions nor its performances ring very true.

Fans of unregenerate underground moviemaking will have a ball.

The acting ranges from adequate (Jared Leto, R. Lee Ermey) to awful (Lindsay Crouse and everyone else).

Everyone tries very hard to make the story sweet and funny, but the soggy screenplay defeats them every time.

Falls flat on screen, weighed down by far-fetched plot twists.

The satire is intermittently amusing, but Arcand adds little to the arsenal of standard mockumentary tricks, and the interesting cast doesn't get many interesting things to do.

The story is a string of sub-Scorsese clichés, and if engaging actors like Malkovich and Hopper seem to be sleepwalking through their roles, imagine how unwatchable Diesel manages to be.

The picture's real interest lies in detailing the villain's sadistic crimes, though, and this is rarely fun or edifying to watch.

As soon as I finish writing this review, I'm going to try traveling a few hours in the past. That way, I can improve my life by skipping this movie!

The movie is gorgeously filmed and contains some fascinating lore about life in northern climes. But the plot is tritely predictable and far-fetched. Julia Ormond, Gabriel Byrne, and Vanessa Redgrave are among the performers who deliver less than their best.

The acting is uneven and most of the romancing seems so mismatched.

Labors mightily to be a frolicsome entertainment, but the results are - well, labored. The dialogue isn't snappy, the story isn't surprising, there's little chemistry between the stars.

Larry and Andy Wachowski directed this lurid, sexually explicit thriller.

Luc Besson's screenplay is dumb, but has just enough weird touches to give occasional glimmers of interest.

What really hurts is the movie's shallow screenwriting, self-indulgent acting, and woozy camerawork.

The first Revenge of the Nerds was a pretty stupid movie. But it was partly redeemed by its genuine affection for the nerds themselves - it made us like them a lot, and you couldn't help feeling good when they came out on top. Nerds in Paradise is also a stupid movie, with more than its share of cheap vulgarity, and it doesn't do so well at making the heroes really lovable.

If you want a movie time trip, the 1960 version is a far smoother ride.

Tennant's featherweight comedy is clearly pitched at the date-movie crowd, and couples may enjoy it if they can get past the picture's simplistic ethnic stereotypes and its willingness to wish away every real-life family problem the characters will surely face after the feel-good finale.

The suspense sequences are straight from the standard Hollywood blueprint, and the movie as a whole is so sloppily assembled that it's almost incoherent at times.

The movie starts with insights about the need for more humane values in health care, then buries them under an avalanche of frivolities, vulgarities, and clichés.

Movie stars have tamed sassy kids in movies from "The Blackboard Jungle" to "Stand and Deliver," but it's hard to remember an example more patronizing or sentimentalized than this one.

If a mildly magical story is what you're after, it'll be worth the price of admission. Otherwise save your milk money for something more substantial.

Unoriginal.

Dull despite its suspense-driven story.

Four chuckles and a lively final-credits sequence are a mighty poor score for 99 minutes of alleged comedy, and the sentimental stuff is even worse.

How could such a high-octane cast produce such low-octane horror?

The movie's most original features are the awfulness of the dialogue and the hamminess of Richard Jordan's performance as a Nazilike policeman. He seems to have given up on the project long before director Alan Johnson ran out of film. [28 Nov 1986, p.39]

Rarely have Gibson's tears seemed more fictional than in this supposedly authentic account of a historical event that's far too tragic to merit such superficial treatment.

Eventually you realize the whole movie has been about young showoffs who think it's uproarious to gross out neighborhood grownups.

Carpenter pulls out all the action-adventure stops, but he and coscripter Larry Sulkis forgot to write dialogue the audience could listen to without howling in disbelief.

The main performances are generally weak, although the smaller ones are sometimes brilliant, and the yarn never builds much momentum as it leapfrogs from one subplot to another. [28 Dec 1990, Arts, p.14]

Get cracking, filmmakers. It'll take a lot of doing to beat this creep-show for worst picture of the year. It's about a computer programmer who beats the devil in a series of spooky challenges. No fewer than seven directors worked on it, and it doesn't make any sense at all. [23 May 1985, p.25]

The animation is deft but the screenplay is stilted, the voice-performances are unimaginative, and the whole project is surprisingly clumsy in its efforts to please young and old alike. A major disappointment.

Not even veteran talents like Dukakis and Scheider can surmount the artificial dialogue, arbitrary plot twists, and wan humor of this disappointing comedy-drama.

The acting is sincere and the camera work is pretty, but this art-movie variation on "The Sixth Sense" doesn't have enough energy to fulfill the high promise of Berliner's previous picture, the enchanting "Ma vie en rose."

Too bad (Arnold) can't save the movie from it's superstitious clap-trap, sadistic violence, and sheer silliness.

The picture is effectively made, but viewers will want to erase the horrific violence that erupts in scene after scene, leading to an unusually mean-spirited finale.

How did a dignified pro like Duvall get stuck in this fender-bender?

Hal Hartley's innovative comedy-drama is more ambitious than successful, but it deserves credit for trying something genuinely unusual.

Suffers from a lack of chemistry.

Shots of blood and naked bodies clash bizarrely with Coppola's more quaint and engaging notions; the result may be intended as a dialectical encounter, but seems more like a head-on collision.

Great premise, but the ensuing trials and tribulations - not to mention hapless attempts at comedy - are as off-key as a karaoke scene in which Hudson sounds worse than any audition Simon Cowell has ever had to sit through.

The blend of live action and animation is competently done, but the subtly mean-spirited screenplay has more sour meows than hearty laughs.

The film has enough wild driving to satisfy any "French Connection" fan or "Bullitt" buff, but there's precious little for anyone else to enjoy. 2 foolish + 2 flashy = 4 get it!

Used Cars is full of used characters, used ideas, and used jokes, many of which are in astonishingly bad taste.

Almost entirely devoted to combat violence and sentimental interludes.

In short, this movie is exactly the kind of starry-eyed escapist fantasy that Dr. Powell suspects Prot of having. It's harmless enough, since we can be cured just by leaving the theater.

I doubt if the results would have satisfied Kahlo, whose originality in matters of life, art, and ideas was vastly more far-reaching.

Rarely has a film poured so much energy into generating fiery emotions, yet remained so icy cold in its effect...Revolution has been dazzlingly shot by cinematographer Bernard Lutic in a process called System 35, but so much visual grandeur seems more embarrassing than engaging when the dramatic element is such a mess.

Nicolas Cage, Ving Rhames, and Steve Buscemi are among the few performers who emerge with a shred of dignity at the end.

Blending animation and live action, this ferocious fantasy is hopelessly vulgar in ways never dreamed of by "Who Framed Roger Rabbit."

Whatever novelty this series ever possessed has gone down the proverbial tube. The actors are on autopilot, and Adam Herz's screenplay panders to its immature target audience so cravenly and relentlessly that it verges on incompetence.

This low-budget drama tries very hard to convey messages of tolerance and compassion, but it's too weakly acted and directed to have much impact.

The problem with Possession isn't that it's filmed in a lackluster way, but that it shouldn't have been filmed at all. Byatt's novel is an adventure in language, telling its story through a kaleidoscopic array of Victorian-style poetry and prose, alongside gripping accounts of the characters' activities and escapades.

Serial killing and other insanity in the French countryside, with ineptly dubbed English dialogue.

The kind of comedy that aims at "edginess" and "sassiness" without managing to be edgy or sassy for a second.

Some scenes paint a convincing portrait of Stern as a witty opponent of stuffiness, prudery, and hypocrisy. Others mix gross-out humor with nasty doses of racism, sexism, and homophobia that reveal a dark side to Stern's professional personality.

A few mildly amusing gags don't outweigh the trite situations and mean-spirited attitude of this comedy.

This belated "reimagining" is as beguiling as a dried-out palm tree.

It has a degree of sociological interest, but it would be more effective if the material were shaped into a more coherent form.

A director of Frankenheimer's stature deserves less sensationalistic material, and so does his audience.

Even MacLachlan's surprisingly witty performance can't compensate for the trite screenplay and Mistry's lack of charisma.

A romantic comedy-drama has to make sense, though, and Love Actually doesn't, actually.

Repetitious teen-targeted fluff.

Action freaks may enjoy the chasing and chomping, but there's no hint of human interest or moviemaking imagination.

Poor writing and directing are the culprits - and whatever possessed the gifted Moore to make her role a nonstop Diane Keaton imitation? There oughta be a law!

Goldmember comes after years of escalating vulgarity have thrown the need for caution -- and cleverness -- out of fashion.

There's nothing special about this movie -- it's just business as usual for today's debased action-movie genre.

Armageddon may sell tickets, thanks largely to a high-powered marketing machine that's been conducting its own countdown for the past several months. But it's not a pretty picture.

Add a megadose of bombastic James Horner music and a perfunctory love-affair subplot and you have a movie that's its own worst enemy.

The film is as tricky and superficial as its low-life characters, using visual flimflam to mask its lack of substance.

An interesting cast is wasted in this misanthropic thriller.

It soon gets down to its real business: fights, face-offs, and showdowns mired in the shallowest sort of Hollywood machismo.

For a movie about people with hugely complicated inner lives, this sadly unconvincing drama stays resolutely on the surface, rarely hinting at anything like an insight or idea.

It's hard to enjoy this when you're barraged by bathroom humor, animal stunts, and gags about a character whose memory loss is so bad he's called Ten-Second Tom.

Like the nuclear sub it's named after, the picture is big, shiny, and expensive. It's also cold, hard, and cumbersome, and lacking the barest hint of emotional or psychological depth. [9 Mar 1990, Arts, p.10]

A number of good actors, including Kevin Kline and Susan Sarandon, are utterly wasted in this idiotic story, which can't make up its mind whether it's a comedy or a drama. [17 Jan 1989, p.10]

Joseph Zito directed this cheap exercise in hate, suspicion, and mayhem. [06 Dec 1984, p.50]