Gary Arnold

1941 represents an appalling waste of filmmaking and performing resources. As one would expect, Spielberg, who directed "Jaws" and "Close Encounters of the Third Kind," sustains a high energy level. But the energy is expended on material that is pointless at best and occasionally hateful. [15 Dec 1979, p.C1]

John Landis must have entertained greater aspirations for his new movie, "An American Werewolf in London," than the dismaying results he's stuck with -- a wasted clever title and a minor fiasco destined for an obscure niche in the scrapheap of horror movies.

Class, a sexual disillusion acted out at the prep school level, would be represented far more accurately by the one-word title "Crass." [22 July 1983, p.C4]

Unfortunately, all too many paying customers will remember being suckered into the Derek remake of "Tarzan," which shortchanges every feature susceptible moviegoers must assume they'll find: tongue-in-cheek romance, exotic high adventure and generous scrutiny of Bo in the buff. Denying people the forms of amusement, notably erotic amusement, that the publicity suggests, Derek exposes a truly dangerous ineptitude.

At best, the filmmakers are guilty of wholesale confusion. For lamentable example, the plot degenerates into a hopeless tangle of loose threads and discarded hooks, beginning with the initial vicious teaser, which identifies Pam Grier as a drug-crazed prostitute who guns down a pair of unwary young patrolmen in their squad car. [7 Feb 1981, p.C1]

Although Bostwick is left in the most exposed position by the nonsensical war games invented for Megaforce, it's obviously Needham who deserves the preeminent rap for fabricating a system of illusion so juvenile that the actors can scarcely avoid looking like chumps.

If any one made a respectable effort to invest this story with authenticity or tension it is not apparent on the screen. Even the big spectacle, the demolition of a dam, is going to look unimpressive to moviegoers who've already been to Superman and seen the identical illusion depicted with far more skill. Force 10 is a mission that should probably have been aborted. Instead it's been allowed to abort on the screen.

A round of misfires from title to denouement, the new comedy "Modern Problems" is a modern problem for moviegoers: the latest rummy example of that strange abomination, the unfunny "fun" movie, victimized by utter confusion about its genre, tone and audience. [30 Dec 1981, p.B6]

The finished film obliterates whatever promise of novelty and human interested existed in the basic idea of Belinski's culture shock. If the rabbi's odyssey was embryonically appealing, the filmmakers have nurtured it along pact from an elephant trying to hatch a robbin's egg. [27 July 1979, p.B1]

The Funhouse begins with a lamely facetious reprise of the shower sequence from Psycho and slides steadily downhill there. [18 Mar 1981, p.B4]

If you aren't feeling so generous, it's pretty obvious that the movie is not only a stinker but an inexcusably corrupt stinker, dependent on the indulgence of a public slavish or naive enough to feel honored when old pros content themselves with smugly amateurish shtik. [29 June 1984, p.B5]

The title, of course, leads one to expect the long-awaited movie version of David Halberstam's The Best and the Brightest, but the actuality is closer to tattered but dopily diverting remnants from The Karate Kid, Road House and Rocky IV. [14 Nov 1989, p.E3]

More American Graffiti suffers from a terminal case of the cutes. Made with the approval of George Lucas, the director of American Graffiti, and perhaps with his misbegotten collusion, More American Graffiti succeeds in making a blithe mockery of its predecessor. [03 Aug 1979, p.D4]

Although the material is conventionally manipulated to provoke terror by exploiting Cujo as a mad dog--a four-footed Jaws as a shameless matter of fact--moviegoers are likely to feel too appalled at the way a sick animal is systematically neglected.

Its toxic recipe consists of prurient exploitation steeped in dankly pretentious imagery. [01 Jun 1992, p.D4]

Both loyal fans and neutral observers may agree that Eastwood has steered himself into a peculiarly murky flight path on this occasion. Literally murky, too. Much of the picture is so miserably underlit, even before the action reaches the Soviet Union, where gloom is meant to prevail. [22 June 1982, p.B]

A sporadically funny, marginally interesting fiasco that might have evolved into a memorable romantic comedy.

Lacking the necessary gusto and sexual chemistry, Rollover is doomed by an excess of huffing and puffing...Despite posh accessories and surroundings, Jane Fonda and leading man Kris Kristofferson seem oddly haggard as well as mismatched -- two rawboned impostors who can't believe in themselves as a dynamic, voluptuous erotic duo. Their skepticism is well-founded. [11 Dec 1981, p.C3]

Mommie Dearest, the film version of Christina Crawford's poison-pen memoir of her adoptive mother, Joan Crawford, looms as wretched excess. Considering the source, however, this ill-advised and disreputable movie could have been worse.

Edwards persists in the missing-person subterfuge in Curse while avoiding the blatant outrage of recycling old footage under false pretenses. He's shot new footage this time, but that technicality hasn't prevented it from feeling depleted and secondhand. [17 Aug 1983, p.B6]

Perhaps their quest had a mythic significance in Richard Sale's original novel that has somehow eluded his screenplay in which it's impossible to believe that the movie heros are doing anything more than beating on a dead prop. [03 Jun 1977, p.B1]

Harry Hamlin remains in a depressing, narcissistic low gear in King of the Mountain. Part of the problem is a blah role: Steve is not a protagonist of many words, or even many revealing looks. [06 May 1981, p.E7]

Isn't it past time to stop dangling Brooke Shields as erotic bait in movies where it's obvious that she doesn't comprehend sexality and everyone knows she's always doubled in sexually graphic interludes anyway? There's one weirdly funny take that seems to satirize this pretty string bean's excruciating lack of sexual consciousness. Tilting her head to one side and smiling like a simp, she looks amazingly like the friendliest extraterrestrial in "Close Encounters of the Third Kind." [17 July 1981, p.B2]

Even before it begins laying waste to the reputations of cast members, Firestarter is promptly exposed as a derivative embarrassment of a conception. What could be better calculated to illustrate King's recent decline than a "new" thriller whose devices have been poorly cribbed and patched together from "Carrie" and "The Fury"? As a matter of fact, "Charlie's Fiery Fury" would be a catchier bad title than Firestarter.

The Entity may be the least catchy title in movie history, and for the first tedious hour or so this curiously indecisive account of supernatural sexual intimidation remains in an expedient and exasperating rut: writer Frank DeFelitta and director Sidney Furie seem fixated on the rape scene from Rosemary's Baby. [09 Feb 1983, p.F11]

Paternity may not be one of the dumbest excuses for a romantic comedy that ever littered the screen, but it certainly feels like a numbing inanity while you're exposed to it. [3 Oct 1981, p.C1]

The Blue Lagoon is a plump sitting duck, waiting to be roasted by sarcastic spectators. But director Randal Kleiser and his associates may enjoy the last laugh at the box office if this oblivious romantic idyll connects with susceptibilities as naive and dumb-founding as their own.

A bucolic sex comedy in which Nicholson the director indulges Nicholson the star an orgy of coy monkey-shines in the role of a scruffy outlaw who enters into a marriage of convenience with a demure young woman who owns a ranch and a goldmine - expires right before your eyes from a terminal case of the feebles. Goin' South is the most flat-footed comedy to collapse on the screen since Nickelodeon.