Desson Thomson

In Adrian Lyne's latest monstrosity, love takes on money -- and loses. Not necessarily in the story, of course. This is a Hollywood movie. I'm talking between the lines.

This suspense drama, which stars Sally Field, Kiefer Sutherland and Joe Mantegna, tries desperately to press your vigilante buttons. But its manipulative agenda is so transparent, you don't know whether to take exception or laugh it off.

After the disastrous "Mixed Nuts," her last holiday season folly, Ephron appears to have hunkered down for a career of pandering mediocrity.

Is Meg Ryan going to play the goofy romantic gal forever?

A serious been-there-done-that number.

The movie is less than nothing special. The movie veers between pretentiousness (oh, the plight of the instant, start-up Artist) and vacuousness.

It's not Christmas that's being stolen here. It's the spirit of Dr. Seuss.

An action opera designed to elicit Beavis and Butt-head-level appreciation.

Although the movie is set in the rock world and, therefore, should be a sort of extended music video, it's devoid of even MTV-caliber originality.

Insipid, by-the-numbers romance.

The driving drama of such a desperate situation is lost in the movie's casting silliness.

A conceptual train wreck, with half an idea scattered like disaster debris all over the screen.

Here are some of Summer School's favorite things: idiocy, illiteracy, irresponsibility, drunkenness, dumbness and debauchery. Piqued? [24 July 1987]

Although the hallmarks of Rudolph movies can be found everywhere -- they don't add up to the usual magic this time.

The comic equivalent of microwaved leftover food -- and pretty stale at that.

After watching this movie, which stars Robert De Niro, Harvey Keitel, Kathy Bates and Gabriel Byrne, I was moved only to find my own bridge to leap from.

The scenario (written by Carl Binder, Susannah Grant and Philip Lazebnik) is disappointingly wan and obsequious.

Lacks that outrageous effrontery that might have socked it to its intended audience.

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.

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

About half a notch above disaster.

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.

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

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.

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.

This one's for Silverstone fans only.

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

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

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

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.

It's uncompromisingly bad, single-mindedly off-target.

Such a bizarre movie that it has completely occupied my thinking for days. Not because it's a good movie, mind you. It's more like the equivalent of a botched tooth extraction with a coat hanger. Some bloody shard remains stuck in an inflamed, fleshy part of my psyche, and it's going to take some serious tugging and tearing to root it out.

Feckless and crude without any particularly funny redeeming value. If there's anything more to this poor excuse of a movie than immediately meets the eye, I'll get back to you.

Insufferably cloying experience.

Screenwriter Lona Williams and director Michael Patrick Jann spare no attempt to show characters at their zaniest, wackiest or most grotesque. The effect is disconcerting. Is this light comedy or dark satire? It ends up being neither.

This is definitely for people who 1) love the video game, 2) think Slater and Dorff are eminently watchable, no matter what bad flick they're in and 3) are wearing industrial-strength ear plugs.

So dull and formulaic, it ought to be leashed and led directly to the doghouse.

It's depressing enough to sit through an unfunny comedy, but it's worse to watch Falk, Penn and Berg having to earn a living like this.

In the uncertain zone between dumb and truly twisted lies 8MM, a movie that will baffle and disgust you in one disconcerting experience.

The result is astoundingly boring and, frankly, tedious to sit through.

There are two distinctive features to the movie: the mind-numbingly banal plot as one chases another who chases another, and all the offensive material.

The remake neither pays perceptive tribute to the original nor updates it in anything but hackneyed form.

There's more suspense in On Golden Pond. And when the predictable ending comes, it has none of the titanic man-versus-beast struggle of the original. It all happens so quickly, you wonder if you've missed something. But, no you haven't, because there it is -- the familiar calm sea . . . of credits.

Doesn't deserve the energy it takes to describe how bad it is.

Let's not waste any time: This movie is just awful. Prime problem: Josh Kornbluth, the chubby, wild-haired, bug-eyed star.

A stunningly insipid romance, marks an all-time low for actor Zach Braff -- his "Gigli," if you will.

So resoundingly awful, there may be grounds to sue for mental suffering.

Let's cut to the chase: We're talking "Ishtar of the Apes."

Whatever the title of the next installment, this movie is certainly One best forgotten.

Let's talk about it quickly, because the thumbs of both my hands have gone similarly crazy. They're pointing downward and refuse to budge until I finish this review.

How bad is it? Let me count just some of the ways.

Director Renny Harlin, whose colon-studded credits include "Die Hard 2: Die Harder" and "Exorcist: The Beginning," knows the deal here: Pay homoerotic homage to youth and beauty, crank up the heavy metal on the soundtrack, and spare no effort to backlight the omnipresent rain.

This movie pulls out so many bad-action-movie cliches, you wonder if this is a how-not-to primer.

Like a wounded yeti, Batman & Robin drags itself through icicle-heavy sets, dry-ice fog and choking jungle vines, before dying in a frozen heap. Unfortunately, that demise occurs about 20 minutes into the movie, which leaves you in the cold for approximately 106 minutes.

A classic like this deserves to be unearthed! After all, this picture is likely to command a pedestal of its own at the local video store. Just check for shelves marked either "Sharon Stone" or "Staff's Worst Picks of 1999."

A pretty dreary affair to sit through. It's not even scary.

This movie reeks, stinks, smells and destroys life as we know it with one olfactory destructive blast.

Love! Valour! Compassion!, an adaptation of Terrence McNally's Tony Award-winning play, which has piano music and exclamation points to spare, is excruciatingly predictable, creatively inane and almost offensive in its depiction of gay characters.

Brain-numbingly innocuous, cliche-soused melodrama.

Avoid this movie unless a) your child has refused to eat until you take him or her, or b) your house is being fumigated to kill an infestation of mosquitoes with the West Nile virus.

If Slater were a bigger star, this self-serving vehicle would have been a hoot, a surefire DVD attraction for any Camp Night in the living room, not to mention a shoo-in for one of the 10 worst movies of 2005.

The episodes are too convoluted to get into.

Lazily written and hopelessly miscast.

Mad City is for those who haven't seen enough movies about hostage situations. It's also for those who haven't seen enough ponderous movies about media exploitation, or Dustin Hoffman's ongoing reliance on muttery method acting.

The movie's a floating longboat that ought to be ignited and pushed out to sea, Viking style.

The movie isn't exactly providing entertaining escape. In fact, the only escape on your mind is going to be the exit door.

It is horrible. Time curls up and dies while this Hilary Duff vehicle wheels its weary, conventional way along.

For about 10 minutes, it works.

The 1994 "Speed," which starred Bullock and Keanu Reeves, was hardly "King Lear" on a bus, but it was an entertaining ride. But this movie is nothing but pain to sit through.

KEN, KEN, KEN, not another Shakespeare, pleeeeeeez.

So dull and awful, you actually wonder if this is some kind of Andy Kaufmanesque in-joke, a deliberate attempt to douse the spark that made the original film so enjoyable.

This time, the jokes about dead animals, gunk in the hair, incest and all other taboos are flatter than the road kill Gilly finds himself picking up for a living.

All failed concept and misfired comedy.

I wouldn't want you to consider even renting this thing. It would only encourage another prequel, this time featuring two dumb toddlers who keep walking into doors and become great pals. Call it "Duh and Duh."

The projectors in the theater practically shut down with boredom.

Don't even consider this when it hits the Blockbuster shelves of shame.

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

Someone definitely inhaled too much before making this one.

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.

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.

There's no escaping the hackneyed plot or Mayfield's conventional hand. So don't go.

A twentysomething comedy with a brain-dead script, unflattering lighting and 16 performers in search of a scriptwriter...[It] feels like one-sixth of an idea stretched to the breaking point.

A truly awful and extremely loud scareflick.

It does wonders to a critic to know that [Britney] could be a continuing font of teen and post-teen kitsch for years to come.

Don't hold your breath waiting for The Punisher to be original, not for one second of its torturous two hours.

About as awful and shamelessly pandering as a fanzine movie could dare to be.

If it were the last videotape available in the only video store in the remotest corner of Alaska, I'd take one last slug of Jack Daniels and start walking directly into the howling snows.

As a child, I thought pure hell meant eternal agony in the flames of Satan. Now I know it's looking down at your watch and realizing Serving Sara isn't even halfway through.

The Devil's Own, which stars Harrison Ford and Brad Pitt, is so epically awful, it's practically homeric.