Desson Thomson

A bad, unimaginative story posing pretentiously as the very opposite.

Another product from Industrial Light & Magic, this fire-breathing, soaring creature is a technical wonder to behold. But they've skimped on everything else. The script douses the movie's fiery potential and director Rob Cohen soaks all remaining embers with his cheap, made-for-TV direction.

Sitting through this is groan-inducing enough, but it's spiritually depressing to watch Djimon Hounsou, who deserves better.

Never did sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll seem more shopworn and routine.

How much you enjoy this movie depends on how funny you find Sandler talking out the side of his mouth with a gravelly squawk -- for the entire movie.

It's a soap opera posing as moral outrage.

William Shakespeare would need a sense of humor to view Jean-Luc Godard's "King Lear" without getting steamed up in his bodkins.

Seems to avoid any kind of edgy, precedent-making attitude, some point of view that feels charged, divisive and consequently alive.

The movie, which is deadly slow and full of Japanese-bashing, is also an undisguised merchandising promo.

With no real comedy to enjoy, it's torture to watch Diesel undergo a predictable change from emotionless soldier to loving family man. Makes you want to spit out your pacifier in disgust.

It sinks so deep and fast, you don't even see bubbles on the surface.

A cold, protracted and unemotional affair.

In Chaos Theory, Reynolds's performance is taut, crabby and tense. And his beard and glasses, which intensify those already narrow eyes, suggest a mad bomb-builder rather than a hapless soul with whom we can identify.

In Hollywood, imitation is the most profitable form of flattery. That is the only plausible explanation for 101 Dalmatians, Walt Disney's disappointing live-action remake of its own 1961 classic.

Director Leonard Nimoy does not use his ears for comedy -- nor his eyes, even. His three leads recite their lines as though they wanted to take their jumbo-sized salaries and run -- which, given this movie, maybe isn't such a dumb idea.

Cro-Magnon-dumb...Less funny than your own funeral.

The exuberance of the Rugrats seems nullified by the effete quirkiness of the Thornberrys.

An uneven collection of bodily function jokes, facial gyrations, sexual jibes and pedestrian slapstick, Dumb and Dumber appears to have been conceived by the leading lugheads themselves.

The film oozes sentimentality, soap-opera bathos and clumsy cribbings from the Frank Capra book of small-town values. Those are its good points.

It just doesn't work...This isn't a blend of modern and classic so much as a collision.

Don't even rent the DVD, it'll only encourage them.

About half a notch above disaster.

I'd rather sit in bumper-to-bumper hell on I-495 for two hours than get caught in Traffic again.

This movie just doesn't match its predecessors.

The movie doesn't have the energy to be truly horrible. It's too muted and enervated. But it's a somewhat tedious thing to sit through.

Leadenly directed and almost soberly scripted, it never captures the campy brightness of the original series -- the herky-jerky animation, the wacky sound effects, the distinctive character voices and that cheesy laugh track.

[Gere] seemed to be improvising his way from beginning to end, like he was disgusted with the actual script.

The inside story is weak, dull and head-poundingly boring, and the outside story is only slightly better, thanks to the lukewarm likability of its two stars.

Devolves into such utter ludicrousness, the best response (other than avoiding the thing in the first place) is to laugh.

It doesn't seem like overstating things to say that Eros becomes steadily worse as it goes along.

Someone definitely inhaled too much before making this one.

You'll be rooting for these people to get slaughtered out of sheer boredom.

Although the movie has its moments, it's a tearjerker that jerks too hard.

Hollywood Homicide is about murder, all right: the wholesale slaughter of anything funny, original or even vaguely logical.

The suspense is laughably absent.

That mind-bending, mystical business was better handled in such films as 1990's "Jacob's Ladder."

The problem with this movie is the problem with most Renny Harlin movies: There's an excessive amount of excess -- a mind-numbing plurality of firearm battles, vehicular explosions and brutally frank sexual talk.

A blundering cringefest, thanks to unintentionally laughable dialogue, hackneyed writing and uninspired direction.

Essentially a dumb guy's day in Heaven. The movie's retrofitted with stunts, fights, explosions, drugs, babes and cars -- not necessarily in that order.

At best, the movie is a problematic chamber piece; at worst, a misdirected, slightly misanthropic pretension.

A fascinating premise. And yet, the movie, directed by Bruce Beresford, never quite blooms.

More sluggish than a funeral barge, cheaper than a sale at K mart, it's a nerd, it's a shame, it's Superman IV.

May be ambitious in its genre-defying abandon, sideswiping science fiction, satire, film noir and melodrama along the way, but it's also exasperatingly convoluted, self-amused and politically sophomoric.

This isn't real life. It isn't even a movie. It's an extended sitcom. And for the first time in your life, you'll actually beg for commercials.

These dramatic shortfalls make us merely worried that two human beings are in danger, but not two compelling souls. There's your missing ingredient, the human X-factor.

A third-rate love story.

It's something no one should watch.

It's a triumph of vile over content; mindless nihilism posing as hipness.

Consider the title your best advice.

David Gale deserves the chair for its brutal assault on subtlety.

There are some very funny passing lines, but the movie's too uneven to enjoy.

There were moments when I thought Gone in 60 Seconds might be a passably entertaining movie. I figure those moments, strung end-to-end, would total 30 or 40 seconds.

Feels like a manufactured Asian "Chocolat," which drives the label 'art house movie' even further into mainstream banality.

Tedious.

Suffice it to say, there is no comedy, no chemistry, no nothing in this movie.

In terms of actual social conscience, the movie gets a demagogic, rabble-rousing F. It also gets a failed grade for honest writing.

This movie is about the worst thing Chan has done in the United States.

I'd give this movie about half a miracle.

You won't feel enlightened, just let down

Why sit through a lesser imitation, when you could just rent "Heathers" and those other movies for a far more enjoyable time? Drop-dead bitchery? Been there, done that.

Slickers II is grounds for a stampede -- away from the theater.

The script's a plodder, and the acting's unbearably stilted. The movie's intentions are like the starry constellations that inspire the eponymous hero: out of reach.

It's hard to tell if this thing's serious or parody and, if it is parody, whether or not it's intentional. Is it a winky joke, for instance, to have lightweight performer George Hamilton as Pacino's business attorney, or just ridiculous casting? Hamilton's performance points to the latter.

All fire-and-brimstone bunk, a tired compendium of involuntary crucifixions, grim messages carved into human flesh, fly buzzings, ominous choral chants on the soundtrack and at least one head twisting.

This David Spade comedy breaks an ankle, ruptures several knee ligaments and hits the dirt harder than a felled linebacker. Best thing you can do for this movie? Leave it writhing in the throes of forced humor.

Lacks the spirit of the previous two, and makes all those jokes about hos and even more unmentionable subjects seem like mere splashing around in the muck.

The only way a self-absorbed treatise like this can get any kind of audience (not to mention distribution) is to cast famous people in it.

Unromantic, nonsexual and hellaciously dull.

There's no question the movie's entertaining. But the blatantly schematic depictions of black and white, liberal and hawk, and other tiresome dichotomies turn A Time to Kill into the moral equivalent of a cockfight.

There's little here to offend anyone, and even less here to excite anyone.

Even by Disney's formulaic standards -- is about as cut and dried as the phone book.

Best news: over in 87 minutes.

This movie is all pretty faces and six-pack abs, but no characters. All surface and no soul. Come to think of it, the surface isn't so darned hot either.

Penn, who also wrote the script, burdens the story with so many self-indulgent side developments that he loses emotional drive and Freddy's desperate obsession gets lost in the shuffle.

But when mechanical plots are a drama's main engine, we look for something else to divert us, preferably good comedy. That's in short supply, unfortunately. And it's no fun to sit through the movie's retread Woody Allenisms.

Fractured, tentative, oh-so-artsy and very much in the style of Wong's previous Hong Kong-set boy-meets-girl movies. But this time, the effect is contrived: a star-driven pseudo-indie affair that will please neither celebrity worshipers nor cineastes.

Although Ryan is cannily cast against type, she doesn't bring much more than muttery incoherence and nudity to the role.

This one's for Silverstone fans only.

The most screamingly obvious reaction to Gerry is: what a load of pseudo-arty you-know-what.

A Mexican movie in which the outcome is never in doubt, the scenes are endless -- sorry, we meant poetic-- and the false beard on the central character's face looks as though it could use a little extra gum.

In a sense, this is a horror film, worse than anything Andy Kaufman could dream up, in which Green tries to outgross himself.

There's nothing to recommend about this film except its sheer innocuousness. And Bill Murray's off-screen voicing as Garfield adds no "Robin Williams" element to the movie.

Doubling duties as director and cinematographer, Peter Hyams seems to have tossed the former for the latter. The Presidio, purported cop thriller, looks great. It is, in fact, less filling. The maker of "Outland" and "2010" infuses a San Francisco setting with evocative misty grays, but screenwriter Larry Ferguson's dull doings hang thicker than smog.

The only quandary in this film is in where to begin despising it.

About as funny as malaria.

I suggest you think of this movie as another bad sausage from the Warner Bros. meat-packing factory. And you should think of this review as a government health warning. Eat this thing at your peril.

Let's wait for a movie where they do get it all right: story, acting and dancing. It'll happen, just not this time.

Awash in hackneyed old-time secrets and hydrophobic metaphor, never consumes us as it should.

Not just a bad thriller but also a thing of pain.

It's sheer agony to sit through, and not for the reasons Lee would relish. It's just bad.

It's too bad we don't have red, glowing DELETE buttons next to those soda cup holders. I could have done the world a favor.

I watched Mona. I felt like drowning.

A jarring amalgam of sitcom goofiness and uncomfortable ooginess.

The Rookie is like one of those maddening, waking dreams when you spend the whole night thrashing in bed while tediously repetitive images batter your racing brain. But at least morning comes. This movie, directed by Eastwood, never ends.

Unfortunately, the drama operates on a see-through, easily shatterable metaphor: the frigidity of the WASP soul. [17 October 1997, p.N32]

To introduce an archetype like this to western audiences -- as the world weathers culturally and religiously demonizing times -- may have been worth this whole flawed movie. Too bad the story didn't just start with him.

It's too bad the filmmakers didn't take a breath, look at the rushes and see what a comedic gem they had. With just a few tweaks, The Merry Gentleman could have made a wickedly funny parody of the over-earnest, lyrically hard-edged indie movie. But it's too late for do-overs.

Equally earnest and unconvincing.