Janet Maslin

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The New York Times
For 1,350 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 59% higher than the average critic
  • 3% same as the average critic
  • 38% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 2.6 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Janet Maslin's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 63
Highest review score: 100 Blue Velvet
Lowest review score: 0 Eye for an Eye
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 684 out of 1350
  2. Mixed: 556 out of 1350
  3. Negative: 110 out of 1350
1350 movie reviews
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    • 43 Metascore
    • 30 Janet Maslin
    Needful Things
    Though this is by no means the grisliest or most witless film made from one of Mr. King's horrific fantasies, it can lay claim to being the most unpleasant. Why? Because when you strip away the suspenseful buildup to a King story, you're often left with mechanical moralizing and crude, sophomoric small talk. Needful Things has more of both than any film could ever need.
    • 30 Metascore
    • 30 Janet Maslin
    The NeverEnding Story II: The Next Chapter
    Made with great effort and no charm, this mirthless fantasy film returns its young hero, Bastian Balthazar Bux (Jonathan Brandis), to the land of Fantasia, which when first glimpsed here appears to be made entirely of cellophane.
    • 34 Metascore
    • 30 Janet Maslin
    The Final Conflict
    In the cast are many, many dogs, who are charmed by Damien in a way no audience is likely to be.
    • 31 Metascore
    • 30 Janet Maslin
    Stick
    Through all this, Mr. Reynolds displays little understanding of the very good reasons why audiences usually like him. He is at his most ponderous here, with none of his trademark resiliency or sardonic humor.
    • 10 Metascore
    • 30 Janet Maslin
    Car 54, Where Are You?
    Though it has a potentially funny cast, this sprawling comedy has been made in a near-total wit vacuum.
    • 39 Metascore
    • 30 Janet Maslin
    An Innocent Man
    More than enough sadism to go around. But the net effect is less excitement than overkill. The screenplay, by Larry Brothers, has a tendency to forget old plot elements as it picks up new ones.
    • 18 Metascore
    • 30 Janet Maslin
    Megaforce
    Mr. Needham's secret weapon is Mr. Reynolds, and Mr. Reynolds isn't here. Without his overriding friendliness and humor on hand, there is too much opportunity to notice the weak spots in Mr. Needham's direction.
    • 37 Metascore
    • 30 Janet Maslin
    The Island of Dr. Moreau
    Mr. Brando's performance will be deemed interestingly audacious only by those who found "Apocalypse Now" too sane.
    • 22 Metascore
    • 30 Janet Maslin
    Beyond the Poseidon Adventure
    Mr. Allen, who directed Beyond the Poseidon Adventure and produced it too, is so obviously ill-equipped to stage action scenes in cramped quarters that his audience winds up wishing as fervently as his characters for a chance to see the light of day.
    • 31 Metascore
    • 30 Janet Maslin
    He-Man and She-Ra: The Secret of the Sword
    The Secret of the Sword is a Saturday morning kiddie cartoon stretched out to feature length, which by some lights is an awfully long time.
    • 34 Metascore
    • 30 Janet Maslin
    Freejack
    The film's frequently dark, grimy look and such digressions as a demonstration of how to eat river rat will appeal chiefly to those who like their science fiction on the squalid side.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 30 Janet Maslin
    Three O'Clock High
    The film jabs so relentlessly at the viscera that the audience is never allowed to notice anything independently; if Mr. Joanou wants you to spot a license plate, for instance, he drives the car right into a floor-level camera.
    • 35 Metascore
    • 30 Janet Maslin
    Oh, God! Book II
    The mirthless follow-up to a film that wasn't all that funny in the first place. [03 Oct 1980, p.8]
    • The New York Times
    • 23 Metascore
    • 30 Janet Maslin
    The Wizard
    Video-addicted kids may well find this exciting, but for anyone old enough to stay out later than 9 P.M. it's a distinct bore.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 30 Janet Maslin
    The Slumber Party Massacre
    The fact that Miss Brown and Miss Jones have obviously tried to inject a little satire and innovation into the genre just makes the ultimate vulgarity of their film all the more disappointing.
    • 32 Metascore
    • 30 Janet Maslin
    The Hitcher
    Existential terror, in the case of Robert Harmon's Hitcher, means an unmotivated viciousness that's as cryptic at the story's end as it was at the beginning.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 30 Janet Maslin
    Rollover
    The dramatic possibilities of the material are weak at best, and its satirical underpinnings are nowhere to be found. As for the characters, they are either deeply unsympathetic or, when they resort to technical jargon for very long periods of time, incomprehensible.
    • 24 Metascore
    • 30 Janet Maslin
    Jawbreaker
    The film's bright look and visual energy are much more liberating than the machinations of its teen queens.
    • 35 Metascore
    • 30 Janet Maslin
    Three for the Road
    The director, B. W. L. Norton, and the writers, Richard Martini, Tim Metcalfe and Miguel Tejada-Flores, display no idea whatsoever of how to keep a film moving or how to hold an audience's interest. Listlessness and sloppiness on this scale are truly depressing.
    • 31 Metascore
    • 30 Janet Maslin
    The Presidio
    It doesn't help that the mystery plot seems half-baked in the end, or that none of the actors appear entirely comfortable with their roles. Miss Ryan looks edgy and spends a lot of time tossing her hair. Mr. Harmon is easygoing and attractive, but his nice-guy manner belies his character's steely talk.
    • 30 Metascore
    • 30 Janet Maslin
    Troll
    Troll has a knowing tone that's more smart-alecky than clever. And it hovers uncomfortably between comedy and horror, without ever landing decisively in either camp. The film is as funny as it gets in a sequence that has Sonny Bono pretending to be a great ladies' man.
    • 34 Metascore
    • 30 Janet Maslin
    Roller Boogie
    103 minutes is an awfully long time to watch people whiz along the boardwalk. The novelty wears off in a hurry.
    • 22 Metascore
    • 30 Janet Maslin
    The Villain
    Mr. Douglas does a lot of stunts, some of them reasonably good; these seem to be the would-be comic backbone of a movie that's not after laughs but heehaws, which in any case it doesn't get.
    • 27 Metascore
    • 30 Janet Maslin
    Cool World
    The plot of Michael Grais's and Mark Victor's screenplay is even more nonsensical than it needs to be. [11 Jul 1992]
    • 31 Metascore
    • 30 Janet Maslin
    House II: The Second Story
    It means to be funny, with a cast including several talented young comedians (among them Bill Maher, as a record business exectuvie), but it's not.
    • 34 Metascore
    • 30 Janet Maslin
    End of Days
    Two ridiculous blood-soaked hours.
    • 31 Metascore
    • 30 Janet Maslin
    The Man with One Red Shoe
    It's mostly just slight, and none of it elicits more than the mildest of chuckles.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 30 Janet Maslin
    Educating Rita
    The essentially two-character play has been opened up to the point that it includes a variety of settings and subordinate figures, but it never approaches anything lifelike.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 30 Janet Maslin
    Ricochet
    The screenplay, by Steven E. de Souza (whose credits include the Die Hard movies), contains many glib, obscene wisecracks, plus the misinformation that Anna Karenina was Tolstoy's first book.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 30 Janet Maslin
    Mars Attacks!
    Just a parade of scattershot gags, more often weird than funny an dmost often just flat.
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