James Berardinelli

Director Sidney J. Furie, whose previous career high-point was either The Ipcress File or Lady Sings the Blues, fumbles the tone as badly as Richard Lester did in Superman III, veering drunkenly from action/adventure to comedy. Gone is the sense of naïve grandeur that made the original Superman such an endearing production.

The ending seems predestined, and the overlong, tepid journey getting to that point isn't worth the price of admission.

This is easily the worst filmed version of anything penned by the prolific author.

Mr. Deeds is flat, except on those rare occasions when Sandler reverts to form or when John Turturro steals one of many scenes.

It represents a missed opportunity on every level. As a black comedy, it fails. As a satire of the bloated wedding industry, it fails. As a drama about friendship triumphing over all, it fails.

Like the candy from which it gets its name, Jawbreaker is fun at the start, but can turn into a chore to complete.

Uninspired and painfully familiar.

If there is another challenger for worst entry of 2007, I don't want to see it.

This is as witless as movies come -- an unamusing, moronic blend of horrible acting and inept screenwriting.

Speed 2 can be numbered among the worst second chapters ever made.

Everything about Staying Alive is cliched: characters, story, dialogue… There’s not a single original or interesting thing to be found. Even the music is tired and, although Travolta evinces the same physicality he showed in Saturday Night Fever, the sense of joy is gone.

Godsend is godawful.

Occasional bursts of comedy keep things from becoming unbearable but whenever Myers tries to get even a little serious or advance the "plot," the desire to take a nap becomes almost overpowering.

Pretentious and manipulative, the movie bludgeons viewers with its new age philosophizing and its desire to be considered meaningful.

Apparently, someone turned up the heat because The Snowman is a sloppy mess.

Temple shows a better path for horror films to follow but the screenplay is too threadbare and the characters too poorly developed for it to really work. This is about 2/3 of a solid effort – unfortunately, the other 1/3 was never made.

Despite being mediocre and largely forgettable, Couples Retreat is not unpleasant, although it's easier to recommend it for home viewing than for a trip to a theater.

It is possible, however improbable, that a "bad" movie can still be highly enjoyable. Formula 51 is such a film.

There are stretches when it becomes tedious and insufferably self important. There's even a late scene in which the movie turns preachy.

This is as dreadful a holiday offering as you're likely to find this year. A lump of coal would be more welcome.

If there's anything to like about The Bounty Hunter, it's Christine Baranski doing a Joan Rivers impersonation.

Friday the 13th is neither tense nor frightening (although, to be fair, it is at times creepy and atmospheric, due in part to budgetary limitations that led to a low-key style).

Getaway is pretty much a 90-minute car chase. That's it.

Not an abomination, although it is uninspired and insipid. As such, it's perfect television fare.

A preposterous thriller where the only thing more disappointing than the ending is the 93 minutes it takes to get there.

The biggest shock of this new movie re-imagination is that it makes the original seem fresh and smart by comparison. Perhaps that makes this whole endeavor nothing more than TV producer Aaron Spelling’s posthumous fantasy.

This is a fairly standard-order bad taste movie, replete with all the characteristics of the genre: grotesque, over-the-top violence; copious blood and viscera; gratuitous, uncensored nudity; and borderline-pornographic sex.

Chris Elliott is appallingly bad as the title character. Although his role cries out for an over-the- top performance, Elliott's grating personae cancels out any positive contributions he can offer in that area.

If there's a blessing, it's that the sequel isn't appreciably worse than the original - but that's slim praise considering how bad the first one was.

The result, while not entirely devoid of entertainment value, doesn't work as a whole.

A frustrating crime thriller that incorporates too many plot threads into the overall narrative at the expense of character identification, suspense, and emotional heft.

Life Itself starts out with great promise – a dizzying first act that creates the tapestry of a character’s life by offering a kaleidoscope of moments from his past. It’s poignant, effective, and punctuated by actions that are breathtakingly sudden and unexpected. However, after the strong beginning, the movie takes a conventional turn.

Fox should be paying potential viewers not to walk out of this turkey. The plot has all the depth and originality of a video game without the fun of the interactivity.

The Informers is nihilism for nihilism's sake; a bleak and borderline-unwatchable collage of misanthropes, self-absorbed a**holes, and pathetic weaklings as they struggle to move forward during the early 1980s in Los Angeles.

The Last Airbender is an insult to anyone with a triple-digit I.Q. and a willingness to use it inside the confines of a movie theater. This is bad filmmaking and bad storytelling. It also sounds what should be the death knell to M. Night Shyamalan's career.

Chase, like his Vacation movies, are things of the past. This is a series that should have died with the '80s. Instead, inexplicably, it has limped on into the '90s.

It's moderately engaging for the first half-hour, somewhat trying during the second half hour, and virtually unbearable over the final twenty minutes. It's a marginally recommendable film for kids, but not necessarily for parents.

95 minutes of unrelieved tedium.

What's wrong with this movie? A better question might be: What's right? Every attempt at comedy is not only obvious but delivered in such a forced manner that any hope of generating laughter dies before the joke has been told.

At least Jessica Alba's legion of fans will have something to smile about. If nothing else, Helfrich has shown her in the best light. If only there was something worth seeing here other than her.

Comes across as a lame wannabe - a romantic comedy that lacks the level of outrageousness necessary to elevate it about the countless trite entries into the bloated genre.

No movie could be more aptly compared to raw sewage than this film.

This grim, joyless motion picture is anything but fun. It’s a chore to sit through, with all the blazing, noisy pyrotechnics proving unable to lighten the mood.

There's no evidence of craftsmanship or energy. Everything, from the plot to the execution, is plodding and obligatory.

The only thing that distinguishes Species 2 is how awful it is.

Can't decide whether it wants to be a black comedy, dumb farce, or sentimental sit-com.

This is another one of those pointless action superhero movies that unfolds like a video game in which the viewer is unable to participate.

Some of the dialogue is astonishingly awful. Sex and relationships are constantly likened to animal interaction.

A bad movie. No amount of perfume sprayed on talk show audiences by Madonna and her husband can eliminate the stench of failure emanating from this motion picture.

Hush has three very simple problems: it's incredibly dumb, it's incredibly boring, and it's incredibly predictable (at least up to the stupefying ending).

Defined by three characteristics. It is as stupid as a decapitated worm. It is as irritating as a mosquito buzzing around one's head. And it is as funny as "Schindler's List."

Mr. Nanny isn't entertainment; it's an exercise in masochism.

The ineptitude of the movie's drama is matched only by the failure of its humor.

Expectedly lowbrow and grotesque, but there are some truly inspired moments.

One of the dumbest thrillers to arrive it theaters in a long time.

Despite having the same title and a similar premise to a 1980 Jamie Lee Curtis flick (kids getting slaughtered on prom night), this is NOT a remake. In fact, it really doesn't have much of a plot. It's basically "The O.C." with a body count.

It is legitimately unwatchable.

Epic Movie is a waste of time. It's like a bad issue of "Cracked Magazine" come to life. It's not so much painful as it is sleep inducing.

This is the kind of movie that isn't even worth renting when it comes out on video because, with the possible exception of Michael Lerner and Omar Epps dancing to show tunes, you've seen it all before.

Unless you derive pleasure from watching Lohan being tortured, there's no reason to subject yourself to this movie. Besides, if that's your goal, all you have to do is turn on tabloid TV. There's Lindsay's living hell of a life, being broadcast 24/7.

Weekend at Bernie's 2 is made for a certain audience -- the indiscriminate movie-goer who will see almost anything that guarantees a few laughs. Those that belong to that group will find what they're looking for in this film. Almost all the humor is macabre and repetitive, but the film manages to be sporadically funny. Nevertheless, I find it hard to believe that many people will pay $6 or $7 to see a picture that has TV sitcom production values, writing, and acting.

The comedy is mostly restricted to one-liners, some of which aren't funny. And the action is uninspired, barely tapping the vast potential of an amusement park chase film.

Message to those who thought Gigli was the worst movie of 2003: check this one out. You'll change your mind damn fast.

A second-rate regurgitation of "The Lord of the Rings." Everything about it, down to the set and costume design, apes Peter Jackson's epic trilogy. However, while "The Lord of the Rings" was a grand story of scope and power, In the Name of the King feels small in more ways than one.

The Layover is an appalling movie.

Things might have been okay if this film had gone someplace, anyplace, but it stalls early, then coasts through an hour of minimally-amusing material before screeching to an amazingly improbable stop.

Mixed Nuts makes a point of stating that there's magic at Christmas. After seeing this movie, I'm a believer. After all, it's virtually impossible to come up with an alternate explanation of how something this awful could make it to theaters across the nation.

The most depressing thing about this movie is not that it's such a complete waste of time, but that there are people in Hollywood who think this kind of thing is what American movie-goers are interested in seeing.

What's missing is honesty. It has been supplanted by artifice.

If you've gone to Kung Pow for the plot, you have made a mistake. Come to think of it, if you have gone for the comedy, you've also made a mistake. In fact, if you've gone at all, you've made a mistake.

Fair Game is howlingly bad - so awful, in fact, that it can actually be enjoyed on a certain level.

Unfortunately, although there’s an opportunity here to do something compelling, that opportunity is largely wasted. Perfunctory characterization, lackluster acting, an inability to sustain tension, and an incoherent ending waste most of the goodwill resulting from the premise.

This film is an absolute mess.

Not only is this an amateurish travesty combining fundamentalist Christian eschatology with disaster movie b.s., but it's plodding and tedious.

The Emoji Movie proves unable to provide even a modicum of content capable of capturing or retaining the attention of an adult. Nap time.

Once again, we have a movie where the jokes are aimed at the least common denominator - meaning that to genuinely enjoy the experience of sitting through Slackers, you will need help from a controlled substance.

Even the rare individual who died laughing while watching the trailer will discover that only half of that phrase - the "dying" part - applies to the experience of enduring the film.

This film has no story, no characters, and no coherence.

In the final analysis, The Curse of Michael Myers is a horrific motion picture -- just not in the way the film makers intended.

Supercon has its moments, although not nearly enough of them, and its grossest-of-gross-out scenes might be disgusting enough to cause John Waters to wince.

Formulated on an idiotic idea and develops a predictably lackluster motion picture from it.

This is bad. Not bad in a way that it might be fun to see when inebriated. Bad in a way from which only death provides immunity.

A cinematic excursion so horrific that it's an insult to bad movies to call it a bad movie.

The Vanished Element provides an opportunity for those who enjoy the conceits and stylistic approach of neo-noir thrillers but are looking for something less entrenched in the standard narrative structure.

Outside of the insects, nothing else is either creepy or compelling. For a better version of pretty much the same story, invest the time in watching "Aliens."

The caper in Carter & June is clumsy and straightforward, lacking sophistication and intelligence. Sadly, that’s an apt description of the film as a whole, which is difficult to sit through and leaves no lasting impression beyond the desire to warn people to stay away.