Jack Kroll

There's nothing sadder than a movie that tries to be adorable and isn't. Author! Author! tries so hard that the screen seems to sweat. [05 Jul 1982, p.72]

Pseudo-lush but crummy flick. [15 Mar 1982, p.78]

The Clan of the Cave Bear is dog. [27 Jan 1986, p.69]

This is one of those films where lots of things happen but there's no real excitement. [28 June 1982, p.73B]

You don't have to be a Hitchcock idolater to see that this dumb, dull, plodding, pseudo-camp bore is a callous, commercial parasite. [13 June 1983, p.78]

One of the nastiest movies of our time, it pretends to be horrified by endemic violence in our schools while actually exploiting violence with a coldblooded cynicism that's worse than the violence itself. [30 Aug 1982, p.61]

The Blue Lagoon is really an exploitation film whose core is so soft it's turned to an overripe mango. [23 June 1980, p.75]

Spies Like Us does have a few yuks, or at least yukettes, but there's only a semi-smidgeon of inventiveness in this ponderous farce. [16 Dec 1985, p.84]

Since we've lost our innocence, our "fun" movies have to be smarter than they used to be. Now that we're so much better informed and more miserable than we were a generation ago, dumbness is no longer charming for its own sake. But CAPRICORN ONE is just too dumb to be fun. We know too much about space shots, astronauts and moonwalks to swallow the dopey implausibility with which writer-director Peter Hyams tells his story of how sinister forces fake the first manned landing on Mars... But Brolin, Waterston and Simpson are just jump-suited dummies. O.J. displays more style, wit and grace in a one-minute Hertz commercial than he's allowed to show in this entire flick. [19 June 1978, p.75]

But the script by Timothy Harris and Herschel Weingrod mistakes busyness for funniness. They make Monty Brewster a fading minorleague pitcher. But we want screwballs, not curve balls. Watching the frantic Brewster try to spend 30 million bucks is more tiresome than hilarious. [3 June 1985, p.65]

This is one of those films that isn't a fllm but some repulsively complicated business deal. Nighthawks purports to be about terrorism, but it should be sued for nonpurport. [20 Apr 1981, p.93]

Movies this bad make you wonder if somebody's kidding. [03 Sep 1984, p.73]

Rourke, a good actor, is reduced to doing his whispering-wacko shtik. Supermodel Otis has a marvelous face and can smile and breathe heavily at the same time. Only Jacqueline Bisset gives a real performance, as Claudia, a fiscal whiz who gets her real kicks not form the carnal but the commercial. [7 May 1990]