Gene Seymour

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]