Gary Arnold

John Flynn's crisp, laconic direction and evocative use of Southern Texas locations - the San Antonio area, with particularly effective, sinister excursions to border towns like Del Rio - transorm Rolling Thunder into a more distinctive exploitation movie than it deserves to be. [29 Oct 1977, p.B7]

Meatballs is a tartly, unpretentiously funny as its title. A sort of "M*A*S*H" for campers, the deftly timed episodic comedy is fabricated around the pranks, games, rivalries and lusts at a summer camp. As the seniors boys' counselor, an easygoing role model and spontaneous comic genius, Bill Murray of "Saturday Night Live" makes a deceptively sensational debut as a film comedy star. [11 July 1979, p.B1]

Watcher in the Woods represents a botched effort by the Disney studio to locate a suitable opening somewhere within the flourishing genres of supernatural and horror fantasy.

The fragile satric fable seemed to defy adaptation. But despite its shortcomings, director Hal Ashby managed to transplant the undernourished narrative with remarkable success. [08 Feb 1980, p.D1]

The rapport that ought to evolve between Gloria and her juvenile charge never quite makes it from the filmmaker's imagination onto the screen. [10 Oct 1980, p.E7]

Private Benjamin seems coarse, sluggish and interminable as a comedy scenario.

Schrader's second feature, Hardcore, is more confidently made than his first, Blue Collar, but it slips into a similar category: absorbing but unsatisfying. [10 Feb 1979, p.C1]

Social consciousness and cultural respectability are allowed to make deep inroads on the raunch, since the kids are suddenly congregated around the Drama Club and devote their major conspiratorial campaign to discrediting a bigoted preacher who threatens to interfere with the term play. [2 July 1983, p.C3]

Although he brings a certain muscular prowess to the screen, Norris is grievously deficient of charm and humor. [11 Aug 1981, p.C8]

Doug Trumbull has spent years maneuvering a potentially stirring mystic pretext to the threshold of realization, only to balk and stumble at the act of finally crossing that threshold. [29 Sept 1983, p.D1]

Although it has beguiling and funny interludes, The Jungle Book lacks the narrative suspense and excitement that propel the best of the Disney animated features from the pioneering Snow White and Pinnochio to last year's The Rescuers. It seems to reflect the Disney tradition in repose, still expert and pleasing but also a trifle stuffy. [29 June 1978, p.B7]

The premise and star remain out of whack until the rambling, diffuse screenplay finally struggles beyond basic training.

Never makes a subatomic particle of melodramatic or psychological sense yet nevertheless provokes an overwhelming proportion of women spectators into screaming fits. [19 Aug 1981, p.C1]

As endearing as most of the filmmakers' touches turn out to be, The Natural can be criticized with some justice for skating along the brink of outrageous affectation. In this case, though, the fairy-tale framework of the narrative is established so clearly and remains so cleverly sustained that the movie earns its right to romantic exaggerations. [11 May 1984, p.B1]

Regrettably, director Hal Ashby has allowed both the protagonist, folk-singer Woody Guthrie, played with surprising canniness and authority by David Carradine, and the Depression setting to drift away in pictorial reverie and dramatically evasive heroworship. [16 Feb 1977, p.B1]

The finished film remains a mess of tangled, turgid continuity and florid, mock-operatic style -- at best a collection of production numbers and set pieces waiting in rain for a story capable of accumulating suspense and meaning.

Belushi also controls a wicked array of conspiratorial expressions with the audience. His smoldering pouts, crazed gleams, elevating eyebrows and erotically-contended smiles generate gleeful rabble-rousing excitement. And he can seem irresistibly funny in repose or invest minor slapstick opportunities with a streak of genius.

A rousing and scenically breathtaking romance about ranch life in the 1880s, the film should recommend itself strongly to families. [24 Dec 1982, p.14]

Although it frequently misfires and occasionally keeps firing away on empty satiric chambers, Student Bodies is a likably sarcastic and knowing assault on the cliche's of horror movies. [11 Aug 1981, p.C10]

The most nagging impediment to wholehearted acceptance of Tootsie and its little storytelling subterfuges is a failure to recognize the hypocritical aspects of Dorsey's imposture and alleged character improvement. Although Dorsey is supposedly sensitized to the desirability of honesty and consideration in romantic dealings by being forced to seethe on the sidelines while Ron treats Julie badly, the hero never does square things with Sandy, the woman whose trust he betrays in a far more deliberate, systematic fashion. Indeed, it seems downright outrageous for Dorsey to get indignant about Ron's oblivious sort of misbehavior when he's conning Sandy in premeditated ways. [17 Dec 1982, p.F1]

Despite the flailing around, the picture fitfully accumulates a handful of modest highlights and silly brainstorms. [03 Feb 1984, p.E6]

An amateurish jumble of romantic and tear-jerking overtures from novice writer-director Willard Carroll. [28 Jan 1999, p.M20]

With The Hollywood Knights, Floyd Mutrux, the director of "American Hot Wax," seems determined to wear out the welcome of a once-amusing nostalgic device once and for all.

As a movie concept, Dragonslayer seems to have so much going for it that it could scarcely miss. Yet it does miss in crucial respects. [27 June 1981, p.C1]

Since I had been fortunate enough to miss or avoid the earlier installments, "The Love Bug" and "Herbie Rides Again," the latest entry in the Disney studio's cycle of farces about the exploits of a sentient, racy Volkswagen, Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo, came as a more stupefying shock than it probably should have. As excruciating kiddie vehicles go, a Herbie is certainly more diverting than a Benji, but comparison at this level smack of sheer desperation. [27 July 1977, p.B7]

Absence of Malice was directed with earnest, straightforward proficiency by Sydney Pollack, and there are crucial public issues involved in the premise. Still, excessively generous allowance must be made if one is to overlook the defects and confuse Absence of Malice with a pertinent, lucid melodrama on a hot topic. A remarkable number of journalists seem to be overcompensating for the film's mildness by treating it as something hard-hitting and usefully purgative. More power to the souls considerate enough to do the filmmakers' work for them, but look out for frustration if you're only prepared to meet them halfway. [18 Dec 1981, p.C9]

It couldn't have been easy, of course, to orchestrate the continuity of an adventure movie in which most of the action takes place in an essentially invisible setting, but it's Lisberger's failure to orchestrate this aspect of the show that ultimately causes the picture to sag. Fascinating as they are as discreet sequences, the computer-animated episodes don't build dramatically. They remain a miscellaneous form of abstract spectacle. [10 July 1982, p.C1]

The Final Countdown emerges from a round trip through this time-bending exercise flattened into a two-dimensional letdown. [01 Aug 1980, p.C7]