Hal Boedeker

We're told that what matters about art is not the image but the emotion it provokes. Well, Godard's King Lear definitely provokes an undeniable reaction: the splitting headache. [17 Jun 1988, p.C5]

The best performance in Three Men and a Baby is given by the baby, played by twins Lisa and Michelle Blair. They are wonderful. The movie is not. [25 Nov 1987, p.D8]

For Keeps is schizoid entertainment. It begins as a comedy, shifts briefly into social commentary and winds up in soap opera land, with Ringwald acting nobly and self-sacrificing. The movie has been heralded as a sign of Hollywood's new maturity, because the kids face up to their situation. That is applaudable, but For Keeps is old-fashioned and obvious. It is to teen pregnancy what My Three Sons was to family life. [15 Jan 1988, p.C5]

Worst of all, though, is Huppert. This fine actress, who has been so effective in European films, walks through her part. Her last American film was Heaven's Gate. For her own sake, she should stay away from Hollywood. [16 Jan 1987, p.D5]

Junk, but amusing junk. [17 Mar 1987, p.B5]

Lethal Weapon is neither a good film nor good entertainment, but it will be a big hit. It takes two popular stories, scrambles them together and delivers something truly bizarre. It's The Cosby Show meets Rambo. [06 Mar 1987, p.D5]

Road is about as much fun as a flat tire. [10 Apr 1987, p.D5]

A combination rock-and-roll tearjerker and domestic drama. It is gloomy, boring and sentimental. [06 Feb 1987, p.C5]

You know a movie's in trouble when the characters babble on about long ago. In The Presidio, they have to. What's happening on-screen is dull and predictable. The movie's highlights, car chases up and down the San Francisco inclines, pale in comparison to those in Bullitt. [10 June 1988, p.D5]

The Great Outdoors isn't great. The Dopey Outdoors would be more like it. It's wildly uneven, yet consistently dumb. [17 June 1988, p.C5]

Funny Farm adds up to enjoyable but uneven summer entertainment that seconds the Green Acres credo: "Farm livin' is the life for me." [3 June 1988, p.D5]

The plot, a series of missed connections, grows boring. The action scenes have no oomph. And the actors are lost. As the disheveled Dan, Cusack is charming, but he can't make this tired tourist tale go. And he can't fall down a mountain as well as Kathleen Turner. [19 May 1987, p.D5]

The occult thriller boasts snazzy photography, passionate acting and considerable suspense. But like Marathon Man, it is empty. This pulp never rises above being pulp. [10 Jun 1987, p.D7]

Midler has emerged as the best funny woman on the screen. As Sandy, she makes abrasiveness appealing. But her work here can't compare with what she did in Down and Out in Beverly Hills and Ruthless People. Neither can Outrageous Fortune. [30 Jan 1987, p.D1]

Poitier is Poitier, and that, after such a dry spell, is reason enough to see the movie. [12 Feb 1988, p.C5]

Tyson rose to the challenges of this demanding role with perceptive, luminous work. It remains the peak of her long, distinguished career. [22 Feb 2009, p.10]

Watching Adventures in Babysitting is like eating a carton of candy bars. The first bites are sweet, but after a while, you're gagging. This is one gooey confection. [07 July 1987, p.C7]

A handsome but empty romantic thriller with the most passionless love triangle you may ever see. [9 Oct 1987, p.D1]

Benji the Hunted is better-than-average family entertainment with some flaws. An irritating musical score undercuts the beauty of the nature scenes. The human performances are regrettable and look downright amateurish next to the animal. Benji is good. Just look into his haunting eyes, and you know why this doggie is a star.

Bloodsport offers some lurid but fascinating bits. Chief among them: Van Damme, his feet tied to two poles, performs horrifyingly painful splits. Otherwise, Bloodsport boasts bad acting, bad photography and a bad script. So much for the art of motion pictures. [03 May 1988, p.C4]

The Principal has no principle. It aspires to be a gritty look at a troubled inner-city school, but despite all its tough talk and its seething students, it's a cornball fantasy. [18 Sep 1987, p.D5]

A best picture Oscar winner, and one of the finest of all American films. [04 Aug 1989, p.37]

Who's That Girl's writers botched the creation of their confection. A successful screwball comedy is like a souffle. This is a souffle made of concrete. [07 Aug 1987, p.D1]

Elaborate special effects ruin the whimsy of this haunted house movie. The filmmakers parcel out the horrific gags so tirelessly they lose sight of the tale they're telling. This is one ghost story that needed an exorcism. [30 March 1988, p.C8]

The latest work from director-producer-writer John Hughes is a muddle. Hughes has packed the movie, the story of a young couple's marriage, with amusing sight gags and jokes. What he has failed to offer are palatable characters, original insights or smooth storytelling. Worst of all, he has tacked on a deplorable teary finale. [5 Feb 1988, p.C4]

A family film to treasure. [02 Mar 1990, p.G41]

Slamdance has an unusual problem: It's too creative. Director Wayne Wang throws in so many artsy shots and technical tricks that the drama, an intricate murder mystery, is muddled. After the lights come up, you're left wondering exactly what you witnessed. [6 Nov 1987, p.D7]

In the romantic comedy Mannequin, a dummy comes to life. The movie never does. [18 Feb 1987, p.D6]

The movie puts us back in Poltergeist territory, but it cannot approach that film's shock value. The plot is too simple. Watch the children pulverize the demons. Watch the demons terrorize the children. You get the idea. [22 May 1987, p.D5]

Teen Wolf Too is a relentlessly idiotic sequel to 1985's Teen Wolf. [1 Dec 1987, p.B5]

Jay McInerney's novel Bright Lights, Big City was hailed as a portrait of the vacuous, coked-out '80s generation. The movie is simply vacuous. The script, also written by Mc-Inerney, strips away the novel's witty and ironic voice. What is left is a vapid yet sentimental cautionary tale about the evils of drugs. Of course, drugs are terrible. But so is Bright Lights, Big City. [1 Apr 1988, p.C1]

Alan Metter (Back to School) directed this wildly uneven trifle. Most of the jokes are tasteless or stupid. [08 Mar 1988, p.B5]

Splashy, uneven version of the musical, directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz (All About Eve). Marlon Brando and Frank Sinatra seem miscast, but Jean Simmons is delightful as the Salvation Army woman Brando falls for. [04 Aug 1989, p.G37]

Hanks is pleasant doing his standard playboy schtick. Aykroyd is even better, showing his ability for mimicry while revealing true feeling as an actor. He can't help it, though, that Friday's stridency grows tiresome. And that's Dragnet's main problem. As funny as the movie is, the excesses weigh it down the longer it runs. [26 June 1987, p.D1]

Lightness' greatest contribution will be to send people to Kundera's book. As a film, it is thoughtful and well-meaning but long and uneven. The filmmakers' love for their subject recalls a line from Kundera's book: "His love for Tereza was beautiful, but it was also tiring." That's what sitting through Lightness is like. [26 Feb 1988, p.C1]

Director Moshe Mizrahi, who did the Academy Award-winning Madame Rosa, cannot decide whether he has a light comedy or a heavy drama, and the film wavers between the two. [26 Nov 1986, p.D5]

Sitting through Action Jackson was like being dragged through a swamp of sick humor and nauseating violence. I needed a shower afterward. [18 Feb 1988, p.C4]

Innerspace suffers from a problem afflicting many of this summer's movies: excess. First, it's too long. Then director Joe Dante (Gremlins) piles on the gadgetry and the inside-the-body special effects, and the movie buckles. [1 July 1987, p.D1]

Arnold Schwarzenegger's latest, The Running Man, is a septic tank of a movie. This atrocious futuristic drama forms a dumping ground for bad acting, derivative writing and stomach-churning violence. The movie stinks. [13 Nov 1987, p.D1]

The filmmakers obviously had something to say, but Dogs in Space is wretched. The photography is fine, and some of the performers do well, but sitting through this film is headache- inducing. [4 Dec 1987, p.D5]

Johnny Be Good -- hah! Johnny Be Terrible is more like it. This dopey football comedy loses major yardage in the first scene and never recovers. Scene one: A high school coach turns a prayer for a state championship into a foul-mouthed speech so loathsome that you expect the Almighty to smite him. If only He had, film goers would have been spared this hell of a movie. [29 March 1988, p.B6]

It's a fine mix of suspense and character study. [02 Mar 1990, p.G41]