Gary Arnold

The new facetious depressant from Colin Higgins -- the screenwriter and now director who has parlayed "Harold and Maude," "The Silver Streak" and "Foul Play" into one of the more baffling winning streaks on record -- runs a merely weak comic premise into the ground with coarse, laborious execution. [19 Dec 1980, p.E1]

A Benji movie can't be the most boring thing under the sun, but while struggling to stay awake during something as tedious as "For the Love of Benji," now at area theaters, you begin to imagine that the minutes might pass more quickly and vividly if you were watching the grass grow or contemplating the horizons in Barstow or Wendover. [24 June 1977, p.B9]

Downey's direction is so flat that about 20 rock songs have been inserted to cover the dithering continuity with a semblance of rhythm. Like the flatulent and shattering noises, the score functions a distracting sound effect, camouflaging tattered swatches of "comedy." [10 June 1980, p.B2]

Jaws 3-D makes a conclusive case for terminating further sequels to "Jaws," as if one were needed. It also reinforces the impression that 3-D is unlikely to make a sustained comeback until its optical inconveniences and dependence on hokey scare effects can be overcome. [23 July 1983, p.C1]

One is left with the unpleasant impression that Little Darlings was animated by an idle longing to exploit its popular teen-age costars for cheap thrills. The depictions are discreet, but the context is obstinately smutty.

The new movie adorned with this sure-fire title happens to be a tacky and disreputable attempt at a sophisticated comedy about women writers.

The setup is so conducive to hedonistic wish-fulfillment that it's a pity writer Dan Greenburg and director Alan Myerson lacked the wit to capitalize on it. [20 Nov 1981, p.C3]

Thanks to the heavy synthetic hand of director George Roy Hill, the potentially charming aspects of the kids' infatuation curdle into syrupy gruel.

Midnight Express is an outrageously sensationalistic movie version of a non-fiction cautionary tale, Billy Hays' account of his imprisonment in Turkey after being convicted for drug smuggling. Parker has upset the book's delicate sense of balance. He uses Hays' dilemma as a springboard for sensationalism, especially sustained depictions of brutality and hysteria. Midnight Express sets a new standard in shamelessness. [28 Oct 1978, p.B6]

Martin Scorsese's obsession with a dubious mystique of masculinity turns Raging Bull into a ponderous work of metaphysical cinematic bull.

The vacuous quality of Race for Your Life, Charlie Brown" would be better represented by a title like, "Bore Me to Death, Charlie Brown." [24 Aug 1977, p.B4]

What really compromises Midnight Madness is not inexperience or subsophomoric humor, inconvenient as they frequently are, but derivativeness. This vehicle can't quite build up its own head of steam when it seems to be assembled with spare parts from National Lampoon's Animal House and Scavenger Hunt. [13 Feb 1980, p.B4]

The general idea is obviously dog-eat-dog, but it's depicted in ways that convince you of nothing so much as the filmmakers' obscene dependence on brutality. Bad Boys emerges as a textbook example of rotten melodrama. [25 Mar 1983, p.C2]

A gaudy erotic showcase for a male stripper named Richard Gere. A couple of feebleminded heads were put together on this would-be-torrid production, a kind of glorified featurette for Playgirl subscribers. [13 May 1983, p.B1]

Such a half-baked, arbitrary update that the decrepit plot seems to arise from the misty region of a kind of Jewish Brigadoon in contemporary Manhattan, a Ghetto That Time Forgot. [20 Dec 1980, p.D3]

Unfortunately, Rhinestone is content to cackle and scratch around at such a dumb cluck level of facetiousness that what began as a "cute" idea degenerates into a moronic one. [22 Jun 1984, p.B8]

As Frank Galvin, the misbegotten inspirational hero of Sidney Lumet's imbecilic courtroom melodrama The Verdict, Paul Newman takes sanctimonious satisfaction in impersonating the sorriest excuse for a crusading attorney since Anne Bancroft misrepresented Margaux Hemingway in "Lipstick." [17 Dec 1982, p.F12]

Still of the Night emerges as not only failed, synthetic Hitchcock but also failed, synthetic slasher and failed, synthetic love story. [18 Dec 1982, p.C1]

Ralph Bakshi's half-baked epic American Pop exposes the banality of his pop mentality. The creator of "Lord of the Rings' and "Fritz the Cat" surpasses himself: American Pop is undeniably his sorriest spectacle yet. [6 March 1981, p.C11]

Happy Birthday to Me is a cheesy tease from the outset. The opening sequence entraps the first victim, then allows her to escape, then entraps her again and allows her to escape again. By the time the filmmakers get around to making a murder scene stick, you're already fed up with their methodology and wondering why the movie wasn't called something like "The Coed With Nine Lives." [15 May 1981, p.F4]

Higgins can't keep his mind from wandering. Foul Play never begins to make sense as a mystery - Dudley Moore and the 3-foot-9 Billy Barty, become the butts of grotesquely conceived and staged sight gags.

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.

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 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.

The Villain is the sort of dumb comedy that never smartens up. [23 July 1979, p.B11]

Scavenger Hunt, a solvenly farce about a frantic competition for a multi-million dollar legacy, is the studio's bottom-of-the barrel Christmas treat. [29 Dec 1979, p.C6]

From the outset, The Possession is calculated to make an alternately ludicrous and sadistic spectacle of the family's victimization.