Gene Seymour

Goes into a tailspin after its impressive setup. Its dramatic tactics become so tangled and diffuse that, by the end, you get the feeling that everything gets tied up too hastily.

There's something plodding and uncomfortably strident about Little Animals that keeps the audience from sharing, much less understanding, Bobby's enchantment.

Sophisticated romantic comedy for people who think "Corky Romano" is trenchant political satire.

The hard-sell comic delivery one expects from contemporary date movies is pleasantly tempered here.

Snarkiness and sentiment are in constant battle for supremacy throughout Run, Fat Boy, Run with no chance of a comfortable draw.

Kattan and Ferrell do their best to fill out the shallow Butabis.

After a while, the only way for a reasonably intelligent person to get through The Country Bears is to ponder how a whole segment of pop-music history has been allowed to get wet, fuzzy and sticky.

Lays thick, goopy layers of uplift on what should be lighter on the heart and stomach.

Succeeds best when it intensifies its focus on the work and life of its main subject, seen in interviews, home movies and in a climactic performance with Bono and the Edge on "Tower of Song."

A dismal pastiche of threadbare plot devices and not-so-comic interludes.

It's no use expecting Return to Never Land to match, much less exceed, Disney's 1953 version of "Peter Pan," which by itself isn't quite in the uppermost tier of the studio's full-length cartoons.

For all its familiar conventions and hoary improbabilities, Double Jeopardy is a relatively efficient model of its kind.

They (Brooks and Douglas) are so out of sync with each other that they seem to be looking for different movies to take their acts, though neither makes you want to see those hypothetical films. Not even as an option to this one.

A spicy little pastry with just the right proportions of flakiness and gooeyness.

If I were 6, I could enjoy Rebound without thinking about all the better movies made from its concept.

Drains the original story of its satire and juices up its shtick, schmaltz and special effects.

His constant chatter may grate, but Noya does the wide-eyed wonderment thing very well.

As a full-service holiday movie, The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause gets you into the mood to shop early and often by making the North Pole look like a shopping mall with a never-ending school pageant.

The droll cast--especially Ferrer, who's exquisite as a tough-talking dunce--deserved something more fully realized than this.

Even the movie finds itself asking when it'll end. Not soon enough.

Those 24-and-unders who are looking for their own "Caddyshack" to adopt as a generational signpost may have to keep looking.

An unintentional parody of every teen movie made in the last five years. Which can be the only rational explanation for making such a mess all over the screen.

Despite the occasional topical reference to President Bush and Sen. Clinton, this movie is, like, so eight years ago, it isn't funny.

So why does Eight Legged Freaks make one laugh out loud even though there is nothing revolutionary about its approach to the giant bug genre? -- the movie is so unapologetic in its crassness that it disarms even the fussiest connoisseur of throwaway disaster flicks.

You might start to seriously wonder if there's a way to get this woman to run for office here in America.

A coy, frantic attempt at screwball comedy, lightly seasoned and more than a little gummy.

As long as you keep thinking of "Babe," you can't help thinking that there's no excuse for movies like Good Boy! to merely push the usual buttons, deploy the usual poop jokes and carry out the usual sight gags.

A hostage drama, cliches intact, is what we get.

As with any Ozon film, Time to Leave comes across with unexpected moments of illuminated stillness.

Righteous Kill's script is credited to "Inside Man's" Russell Gewirtz, and you wonder how the sleek, nuanced flow of that earlier movie evaded this one.

Griffiths' Pam holds your attention without any gratuitous mannerisms or broad asides. It's a sleek, rangy performance that all but redeems the hackneyed familiarity of the premise.

So how then do you duplicate a magic aura from 30 years ago? You don't.

You'll be goaded throughout The Comebacks to think of "Bend It Like Beckham," "Remember the Titans," "Rudy," "Hoosiers," "Field of Dreams" and their ilk. What you also think about is how much this stuff worked better in "Airplane!" or "Blazing Saddles."

Thinking too much about the contents will ruin what little pleasure there is in the experience.

Where the first "Jeepers Creepers" came across like a dark, wacky dream, the inevitable Jeepers Creepers 2 seems more like a franchise under construction.

All told, this is going to make passable television. Eventually.

Edmond does, on the surface, seem very much a contemporary tale of urban terror. Yet despite the best efforts of all concerned, what seemed explosive and provocative two decades ago now comes across as schematic and artificial.

There's no real rigor or craft applied to this story -- just mood, tone, neo-gothic imagery and frantic attitude. If only Penelope knew what it truly wished to be and how to go about it. Which is probably what this overly coy fantasy's modestly appealing title character wishes as well.

From the beginning to its very end, The Benchwarmers seems to be struggling to justify its own existence.

Script resounds throughout with astringent dialogue and stark authenticity.

Hostel II is far too shrewd and savagely witty to be caught engaging in higher seriousness. Roth could probably go even further with this particular franchise if he wanted to. Yet somehow, I think he's meant for grander, subtler and more intricate distractions than this.

When the outtakes at the end don't make you laugh, what does that tell you about the movie that preceded them?

Its dark-edged crime-caper plot is so formulaic it seems almost ritualized. Yet Ice Cube and Mike Epps enact their standard odd-couple tango with such ease and brio, you'd think they'd never seen such movies before.

There are enough grace notes and gentle surprises strewn along this well-trod path to make Just Looking just good enough to justify Alexander's career move.

What Idle Hands lacks in originality, it makes up for in energy and insolence. It takes guts for a movie to indulge as much as this one does in proto-hippie humor and you find yourself tickled, in spite of yourself, by the movie's nerve, if not its jokes.

To her credit, Jovovich carries out her action-hero duties with swagger and conviction that never get out of control. Clearly, she's expecting a franchise out of this.

Though Aliens of the Deep flirts with Zissou-Murray's divine madness, Cameron's vision seems somehow cozier. No wonder he's not yet ready for dry dock.

While Yamamoto's bullets never miss, Kitano's attempt at tragic grandeur of "Godfather"-esque proportions misses to an almost embarrassing degree.

A knucklehead operation, all glands and attitude with no heart or brains.

The movie falls short of the grandeur it's reaching for, but if you're looking for balm to soothe your frazzled nerves, you may be able to scrape some from the movie's rawer edges.

Skip it. Just fill in the blanks and you too can brew the same bland, goopy mixture, right down to such clunker lines as "There is a Santa Claus, Ma. He just doesn't come to Brooklyn anymore."

An exquisite love story directed with admirable subtlety and sensitivity.

The movie is over the top and garish. Its transitions often are sloppy and crude. But it brandishes its excesses like a loud, retro suit.

A laid-back excursion through the "Star Trek" phenomenon that boldly goes where millions and millions of fans have gone--in and out of costume.

The cause is just. But there's something off-kilter about the mix. Maybe it's because the animation retains its TV flatness while the story's texture is gratuitously bulked up.

An undervalued 1978 thriller with an ingenious script by Curtis Hanson. [23 Feb 2001, p.18]

But what little humor there is in the movie becomes subservient to the grisly violence, gratuitous cruelty and ugly car chases.

Reunion is an awkward compound of paradoxical tones and ideas... But one shouldn't underestimate Perry's ability to make such contradictions work and get away with the most wretched excess.

Gallops along at a quick, easygoing clip. Grown-ups may have to scrub the sugar from their frontal lobes. But it's not about them, is it? Never was. Never will be.

Mindless escape. [12 April 1999, Calendar, p.F-4]

Low comedy doesn't get any lower than Love Stinks.

It's nice, once in a while, to come upon a movie that knows it's nothing special, proves it and doesn't care so long as its target audience feels good enough to have a refreshing beverage or two afterward.

Driving Lessons follows the well-worn path laid down by other, better movies while making strained, ludicrous things happen toward the end.

The Corruptor manages to make a meat-and-potatoes action flick into a cunning little meditation on personal loyalty and situational morality. [12 Mar 1999]

Rarely have a novelist and filmmaker been better matched.

Whether you care if they find them (terrorists) or not may depend on how much you've been able to withstand Bad Company's sensory overload of firefights, vehicular mayhem, techno-cool swagger and enough bumptious contrivances to fill several seasons of daffy prime-time soaps.

Pettis is adorable, but she pushes the cuteness dial well past one's tolerance level. Still, if you've got small ones yourself, they'll probably enjoy the messes Joe and Peyton make together. They may also wonder why it takes so long for all the movie's messes to get cleaned up.

What you have here, essentially, is a classic "Honeymooners" episode juiced with tropes from the most recent "Rocky" movie.

Every generation is entitled to its dopey, sticky junk and, deep into the winter blahs, they don't get stickier or dopier than Snow Dogs.

Stay as far away from Just My Luck as you can.

The gags, almost all of which involve the passage of gases and liquids, move at a fast-enough clip to keep you awake throughout. For which this review expresses a sorrow as profound as the sympathy it feels for all the actors.

Shows less human dimension than the new Wallace and Gromit movie.

Documents accurately the capacity of pop culture to make mongrels of its consumers. But it doesn't quite know (or want to know) what to make of it.

Gadget instead ends up as another mindless, noisy thrill ride that gorges its audience on bright effects and leaves it queasy from overconsumption.

One of the least sensationalistic--and therefore, more unsettlingly plausible--visions of prison life ever transfigured into big-screen drama.

Has the right mix of sugar and spice for a satisfying rush.

The movie, with all its brashness and crassness, can still claim noble motives in encouraging insecure young people to seek the pop diva buried deep within.

Good Burger, K&K's inevitable first movie, will satisfy their audience's appetite for basic, messy silliness while leaving many grown-ups mildly bemused by the fuzzy obviousness of its humor, the gawky pacing of its sight gags and the second-handedness of its slapstick--almost all of which is redeemed by the eager but never cloying charm of its two stars.

The movie's clatter and whiz-bang suggests more humor than there actually is.

Manages to sustain a sweet, funny groove for, say, 65 of its 85 minutes.

Let's hope -- shall we? -- that the "true story" that allegedly "inspired" All the Queen's Men was a lot funnier and more deftly enacted than what's been cobbled together here.

Like a dinner-theater version of the "Alien" movies without the good grooming.

So TV-movie-of-the-week that you wonder throughout why you can't use a remote to find a decent ballgame.

There is plenty of nasty patter and aimless jokes about hard-core sex, soft-core drugs, dog feces and flatulence to keep you occupied while you wait, in vain, for any reason to laugh out loud.

Struggles awkwardly to bring a twist or two to its hoary class-conscious story line, aiming for a subtlety in character development that's smothered by excessive kitsch and kink.

There probably isn't another actress anywhere who could make that corny self-advertisement work. And there definitely isn't another actress who could make such an overbearing heroine worth watching for an hour and a half.

At times, the narrative thread slips the movie's grasp and there are flat spots in which characters just scream and thrash. Given what its ending aims for (don't ask), such interludes feel flabby and gratuitous even with Sutherland and Spacek providing gravitas to the ghoulishness.

You won't feel anything. Period. Oh, maybe bored or disoriented by the inside jargon and alien references that will be comprehensible only if you happen to have played the computer game on which Wing Commander is based. [12 March 1999, Calendar, p.F-10]

You'd like to think such bankruptcy of imagination means we've seen the last of these subterranean creeps. But you know they'll be back soon to collect their royalties from the gore hounds who apparently don't care how dull or warmed over the accompanying package.

What emerges from Arlyck's musings is a penetrating cinematic essay on how generations in the last century struggled to take hold of history and reconfigure the shape of daily life.

It looks as if no one bothered to deliver more than the minimum requirement of magic or artistry.

As over-the-top as Raven-Symoné and Lawrence are, the most live-action cartoon characters in College Road Trip are the father-daughter tandem of Doug (Donny Osmond) and Wendy (Molly Ephraim), whose nitro-powered perkiness pass the point of grating and move into a perversely antic state of grace.

It's a pastiche of pulpy elements culled from all the "Dirty Harry" movies you can think of.

(Lawrence) has every right to be proud of carrying this rickety film on his stooped shoulders.

As its plot thickens, Waist Deep gets more outlandish. The whole mess empties out into an overextended car chase through Los Angeles.

The noir atmosphere doesn't quite smother the dialogue's cheesy smell.

Only the innate sweetness of both its lead character and its base premise keeps you from wanting to slap Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo upside its mangy, empty head.

There's more than a little Oedipal melodrama tossed into the mix. But the movie rarely gets as sappy or as contrived as one keeps expecting.