Edward Guthmann

Murphy is wonderful -- I wouldn't begrudge him an Oscar nomination -- but The Nutty Professor is a mess.

Sweet and harmless -- a beach movie in more ways than one -- but it doesn't run awfully deep.

A glossy miscalculation.

The wolf-homosexual analogy is well drawn, but Wolves ultimately feels slight, a tad unfinished -- as if it were conceived as a sketch and hadn't been fleshed out to feature length.

Ultimately, Regarding Henry has its heart in the right place, but is far too reluctant to share it with us. [10 July 1991, p.E1]

Talky, emphatically unsteamy psychological drama.

If John Waters had directed Mermaids, the new Cher comedy, it might have more of the spunk and the trash that it needs. In the hands of middlebrow director Richard Benjamin, it starts off promisingly but finally sinks into schmaltz and melodrama. [14 Dec 1990, p.E1]

The movie isn't particularly well-paced, and I found it dull. But I've got to give credit to Todd Masters, who designed the special-effects makeup, to Gilbert Adler, who directed the Crypt Keeper sequences, and to Zane, who plays the Collector with style and wit. If I were 12, I might've loved it.

It's like watching a bad update of an Antonioni film.

The story doesn't quite pay off, characters are underwritten and the surprise ending is contrived and unconvincing.

Granted, you don't expect much from a movie like this: azure seas and honey-dripped sunsets, perhaps, a little titillation and a few wicked laughs. But Robert Steadman's photography lacks the imagination of Almendros' work on The Blue Lagoon, and the rare erotic moments are no match for the dumbness of Leslie Stevens' script. [03 Aug 1991, p.C3]

Slick, overly deliberate and brimming with hammy performances...directed by Rob Reiner with glistening, uninspired competence. [11 Dec 1992]

Ultimately there's something too measured, too controlled in his film.

Directed by first-time film maker C.M. Talkington, Love & a .45 is a low-rent variation on Natural Born Killers -- ragged, raunchy, a bit bratty but not altogether worthless.

Sentiment, the kind bordering on schmaltz and easy tears, is found in Shower, a well-meaning generational drama.

One Fine Day is no great shakes, but it avoids being tiresome thanks to the attractiveness of the stars and to a few twists that screenwriters Terrell Seltzer and Ellen Simon offer to differentiate this from other bickering-adversaries-fall-in-love comedies. Both stars also have adorable kids who figure prominently in the plot.

It's an honest portrayal, but it leaves the audience stranded, without the emotional hook of a character we can care about.

Surprisingly tepid and soapy.

This is pleasant, safe entertainment that ought to appeal to kids younger than 10, especially to girls, with its female-empowerment fantasy.

Jingle wants to warm our hearts and establish Schwarzenegger as a family man -- but devotes so much time to goony violence and broad physical comedy that the last-reel schmaltz feels hollow and tacked-on.

In Hollywood, where integrity is rapidly consumed and careers defined by market value, there's trash and there's trash with a pedigree.

Little Buddha is ambitious, sincere and squeaky clean -- a dose of spiritual eyewash that skims the surface of the Buddhist religion and leaves us wishing for more. [25 May 1994, p.E3]

Melodramatic take on love and war.

It's beautifully shot by first-time feature director Antoine Fuqua, whose eye for sensual surfaces, deft camera moves and elegant framing was refined with commercials and music videos

Exuding glamour, health and prosperity, real-life spouses Beatty and Bening are so radiant that they run the risk of seeming superhuman and thereby losing our sympathy as screen characters.

Pure of intention and passably diverting, His Secret Life is light, innocuous and unremarkable.

The Brady Bunch Movie is fairly innocuous, and ought to satisfy the twenty- and thirtysomethings who grew up on the sitcom. Just one problem: It may be unsporting to point this out, but the whole notion of holding up the Bradys as the ultimate cultural icon of the '70s is basically a lie.

A provocative, upsetting film.

Even the surprise ending arrives with a thud and makes us wonder why Shyamalan didn't try something new instead of recycling his "Sixth Sense" recipe.

A domestic melodrama with weak dialogue and biopic cliches.

I just wish that "Apollo 13" worked better as a movie, and that Howard's threshold for corn, mush and twinkly sentiment weren't so darn wide.

As haunted-house thrillers go, Cold Creek Manor is more ludicrous than the average but at the same time more handsomely produced.

It's not a bad film, but Towne and his star, the charismatic Billy Crudup, never fire the imagination in the way their inspirational, respectful biopic is obviously intended to.

It's hard to give two hoots about any of these characters.

Sexual curiosity is a very dangerous thing in Rain, a dazzling mood piece from New Zealand filmmaker Christine Jeffs.

It sets up two or three dozen satirical targets, hits the mark occasionally, but has trouble maintaining an even satirical tone or satisfying pace. Dawber, too, is unappealing in the female lead -- definitely outclassed by Ritter. I'd wager Stay Tuned will die an early death at the box office and find its real life, appropriately enough, in home video. [15 Aug 1992, p.C3]

Has a weirdly divided structure that alternates Irwin's nature segments with clumsy dramatic footage set in the CIA.

Impeccably mounted, nicely scored and beautifully written.

Mother is a relationship comedy, like Woody Allen's films, and it screams for the smart, elastic pacing that Allen creates. The situations are funny -- 40- year-old John moves into his old bedroom, goes shopping with Mother, is shocked that she has a boyfriend and occasionally curses and smokes -- but his poor timing flattens most of those scenes.

It's a light-hearted comedy about faith, transcendence and American-brand exploitation, and addresses those issues in such goofy, indirect, unhurried fashion that you could easily miss what Schrader has to say.

The movie, directed and written by Gregory Nava ("My Family/Mi Familia"), is only so-so but Lopez, who appeared recently in "Jack'' and "Blood and Wine," is so vibrant that you almost forgive the movie's paint-by-numbers script and moldy formula.

Too bad the plotting is jumbled, and the characters too numerous and undifferentiated.

Neutralizes these characters, makes them cute and one-dimensional like fluffy dolls.

Basketball Diaries is an earnest, botched effort to do justice to Carroll's book. Amazingly, though, even with Kalvert's lack of style and vision, the greatness of DiCaprio's performance is undiminished.

The film has a good heart, but its central premise -- that ignorance is an enchanted realm -- is too sentimental.

It makes you wonder when Araki is going to find something else to think about.

The story of an elaborate con game and the wholesale betrayal of an innocent man, it's also an unusually cold film that ends with a feeling of hollow soullessness.

[Harris's] craft is shaky, and the actors she's assembled, with the exception of Johnson and Ebony Jerido as Chantel's best friend, are one step above Amateur Hour. Just Another Girl looks and feels like a first-time effort. [02 Apr 1993, p.C5]

A messy, ambitious comedy.

One can admire it, but it's hard to get caught up in it.

A not-insubstantial comedy.

Doc Hollywood has its moments, including some nice comic turns by Barnard Hughes as a curmudgeonly doctor, Bridget Fonda as the local coquette and David Ogden Stiers as Grady's folksy mayor. And Julie Warner is certainly hot stuff. But Caton-Jones' approach is too facile, and his use of Southern-cracker cliches too offensive, to capture my vote. [02 Aug 1991, p.D1]

Little rings true in The Commitments. The music, which is never lip-synched, is very good -- especially when Strong, only 16 at the time, belts Otis Redding's Try a Little Tenderness. But the characters are shrill and two-dimensional, and the performers, most of whom had little or no prior acting experience, are made to look like pro-wrestling buffoons. [16 Aug 1991, p.F1]

Gratuitous, yes, but Giannaris has the visual finesse to make it work.

Sweet and insubstantial -- just like the French Christmas cake for which it's named.

Rich with statistics and snazzy visuals, but it ignores those larger questions and, as a result, feels a tad naïve.

Pure ham and cheese.

Lacks the kind of rhythm and snap to make it work -- and allows this fitfully entertaining romp to dribble on way too long.

Largely and insider's joke.

It's an interesting technique -- the blurring of reality and "movies" -- but Korine's objective is so narrow and mean, and his viewpoint so colored by smug, adolescent condescension, that Gummo comes off like a mean-spirited prank.

The Portrait of a Lady is a huge disappointment. It's a deliberately arty, overly formal exercise in emotional terrorism.

It may smell awful from a distance, especially if you have low tolerance for lowbrow humor, but up close this yarn about an unlikely golf star is fairly painless.

As dreary as Oscar is for the majority of its 110 minutes, the movie sings whenever Shearer and Ferrero are on screen. [26 Apr 1991, p.E1]

Coming-of-age schmaltz fest.

Pokemon is over.

Campbell and Edwards work wonders with the rocky, wide-open Oregon landscape, but none of their periwinkle-blue skies and sparkling shots of whooping cranes in flight can compensate for a film that aims high, means well, and ultimately fails its audience. [20 May 1994]

The potential for a funny film is here -- one that captures people with their ''clothes'' off, and uses fashion as a metaphor for emotional defenses. Sadly, Altman seems to have taken out all the jokes, and given his actors nothing but sketches to work from. [23 Dec 1994, p.D1]

Floats along on the strength of its writing and supporting cast.

Smothers whatever merits it may have had in a rush of bells, whistles, bombast and smoke.

Stylized dialogue tends to play awkwardly onscreen -- we're conditioned to naturalistic conversation in films -- and Waters, who makes his feature directing debut with The House of Yes, fails to create an emotional tone or attitude to match the characters' goofy repartee.

Ultimately, Chechik can't pull off the fractured-fairy-tale aspect of Benny and Joon. His film never explains mental illness, but romanticizes it, making it seem like a state of enchantment. It's ultimately irresponsible, and not very funny. [16 Apr 1993, p.C1]

Lacks insight and finesse, and feels like a boldfaced Rorschach for Smith's own hang-ups.

Three hours of overstatement and schmaltz.

Handsome and sincere but slightly awkward in its combination of entertainment and evangelical boosterism.

A pleasant but conventional film.

A menage a trois tale that aspires to the breezy screwball comedies of the 1930s -- but more often resembles a hip soap opera.

Consenting Adults is well-made, preposterous junk -- the kind of modestly effective thriller that delivers a modicum of thrills but insults its audience, over and over, to achieve that effect. [16 Oct 1992, p.C1]

So quick that the flat moments are rapidly, inevitably chased by a new gag.

A serious weakness for corn isn't Marshall's only problem. She's got a gift for comedy and she brings out the best in many actors, but she's juggling too many elements here -- baseball, a huge cast, a 1940s milieu -- and never finds a consistently satisfying tone or rhythm. [1 July 1992, p.E1]

It starts out with several seemingly separate stories and characters, allows them to tease, overlap and shade one another, and then weaves them into one rich fabric. It's an allegory about American life -- a tough, cynical meditation on race, crime and the futility of human endeavor.

Pryce is very good, but Very Annie Mary is a bit too eager to please.

The movie was written by Scott Yagemann, who taught seven years in the Los Angeles public- school system, and you can feel the rancor and bitterness he still carries.

Light and innocuous.

Harmless enough, and its team of actors so frisky and enthusiastic that it manages to deliver a modicum of laughs despite itself.

Unfortunately, Raising Cain is largely a retread of De Palma's vintage thrillers from the '70s -- an extended self-homage that makes you wonder if his imagination got frozen in 1980.

Unlike other recent films noirs -- ''The Grifters,'' for example, or ''After Dark, My Sweet,'' both of which were based on Thompson stories -- One False Move lacks style and wit, and doesn't explore its characters beyond their cheap, cruddy exteriors. [24 June 1992, p.E1]

Night and the City is basically a mess, but De Niro, calling up his reserves of manic energy, is entertaining in the title role. He's foolproof, really: He even shines in mediocrity. It's a shame his talent didn't rub off on Jessica Lange. Playing Helen, a tough-broad barkeep who joins Harry in his biggest scam yet, the overly mannered Lange gives her worst screen performance to date. [23 Oct 1992, p.C1]

Strange Days wants to say something about faith and redemption -- about the importance of maintaining one's humanity in a darkened world. That's a worthy intent, but Bigelow is so enamored of high-tech thrills, and so mesmerized by the violence she seeks to condemn, that her efforts at 11th-hour moralizing seem limp and halfhearted.

Forget Beautiful Girls. The title ought to be "Jerky, Messed- Up Dudes With Nowhere to Go"

A schlocky thriller that might appeal to less discriminating members of the mall crowd.

It sounds promising, but it doesn't work. You get the feeling that Soderbergh, so early in his directing career, has exceeded his reach -- that the com- plicated logistics of making a film on location in eastern Europe, compounded with the challenge of bringing to life such a fundamentally lonely and passive figure, had stymied him. [17 Jan. 1992, p.D1]

The dialogue, heavy on sarcasm and puncturing insults, never captures the World War II period but sounds ridiculously anachronistic.

It rambles, it's repetitive, but once in a while there's a sparkling moment when someone speaks in a way that conjures the fierce passion of the '60s.

Edge of Seventeen is sweet and affectionate, but it also has "first effort" stamped all over it. Director David Moreton never made a feature before this, and has yet to learn how to compose a shot or block his actors.

Sexy and passably entertaining, with a plot that's too clever by half.

A mean-spirited comedy...that steals the rampaging-psycho-chick formula from ``Fatal Attraction'' and tries to make it funny.

What Daylight lacks is the knowledge of its own limitations. The only really hysterical line is delivered by Sly's son, Sage Stallone, who plays one of three young prisoners also stuck in the tunnel...Surrounded by rubble and rising water, he gazes longingly at the 14-year-old Harris and says, "If we don't die in here, I was wondering if I could give you a call. . . ."

Apart from its cast, however, Gas Food Lodging doesn't have a lot to recommend it. This is true: It's earnest, the milieu it establishes feels authentic, and the three actresses work hard at giving their characters a life...But Anders' inexperience at writing and directing shows. She overloads her film with too many subplots, and consequently loses whatever steam she manages to build up. She introduces too many secondary characters -- two suitors for Nora, one ex-husband, and two boyfriends apiece for each daughter -- but never develops any of them adequately. [9 Sept 1992, p.E3]