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.