Jay Boyar

All things considered, Pure Luck exists somewhere in that vast middle ground of the cinema - the not-badlands. Watching this film won't make you feel as if you've won the lottery, but at least you won't feel like your pen is leaking. [09 Aug 1991, p.8]

This souped-up exploitation flick is a little like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid - if Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid had been set in the near future (1996) and produced by morons. [23 Aug 1991, p.6]

This is ugly. [20 Sept 1993, p.D2]

Longo and Gibson have so little interest in the personalities of the characters that the actors seem like stand-ins for computer-generated images. [27 May 1995, p.A2]

Revenge isn't sweet. It's crude, ugly, pretentious, repulsive, obnoxious and just about unwatchable.

Emilio Estevez (Stakeout, the Young Guns movies) isn't exactly Michael J. Fox, but he qualifies as a sympathetic hero, and Rene Russo (Major League) is fine - if a bit bland - as his girlfriend. Besides, the real fun is in the supporting cast. Mick Jagger plays a sort of bounty hunter, and although he has only about 2 1/2 expressions, they're good ones. Jerry Hall, who appears very briefly, plays a newswoman with only one expression: You've seen it before, and it is plenty. [21 Jan 1982, p.D1]

Although the picture's biggest problems are the lame writing and limp direction, it doesn't help that the main role requires a comedian, which Arnold just is not. [22 Nov 1996, p.20]

Estevez set out to make a movie about garbage and ended up with a movie that actually is garbage. [27 Aug 1990, p.C1]

Director Michael Chapman, an experienced cinematographer, is skilled in conveying ideas through pictures -- quite an advantage in a movie about people who aren't especially verbal. And Chapman's cinematographer, Jan De Bont, has a varied palette that responds to the visual demands of a world in transition.

Even though the new film is an obvious rip-off of It's a Wonderful Life (by way of Back to the Future), and even though much of this material is familiar from Taking Care of Business, Mr. Destiny might have been watchable if director/co-writer James Orr (Tough Guys) had demonstrated any comic timing whatsoever. [12 Oct 1990, p.4]

This movie will finally kill off the series.

The problems with North go beyond casting, however, way back to the movie's central idea and to the filmmakers' failure to think it through. [22 Jul 1994, p.23]

Let's just say that compared to Son-in-Law, Green Acres is Noel Coward.

The script, by Showgirls' Joe Eszterhas, seems dead-set on evoking a darkly sensuous mood, full, as it is, of sex games, secret sex tapes and even - Lord help us - a fertility mask. But William Friedkin (Blue Chips, The Exorcist) directs in such a stark, threatening style that the combined effect of their efforts is an uninvolving, faintly creepy brooding. [13 Oct 1995, p.25]

Home Alone-style slapstick with occasional (almost random) heart-tugging. [17 Jun 1994, p.27]

The best to be said for the current production is that the editing is refreshingly swift, the cinematography is clear-eyed and the running time is mercifully short. (I clocked it at just under an hour and a half.) But do I recommend Fire Birds? That's a negative. [29 May 1990, p.D1]

The irony is that this movie - which fails to emulate such storybook-based virtues as coherent plotting and characterization - is pretty darn empty itself.[15 Feb 1991, p.6]

A dull-witted variation on the themes of the original Blue Lagoon, in which two young people (played by Brooke Shields and Christopher Atkins) were stranded on a tropical island.

In Howard the Duck, the special effects -- and the Muppety duck jokes -- command so much attention that it's easy to overlook the movie makers' clever narrative touches. It's rather fitting, for example, that Howard is shown to be almost as much of a misfit on the duck world as he is on Earth. And there's a sometimes-touching, sometimes-hilarious Fay Wray-King Kong relationship established between Howard and a sexy, baby-faced rock singer named Beverly (Lea Thompson). The main reason the relationship is so intriguing is that Thompson always keeps you guessing about her character's true feelings for the cantankerous bird. It's hard to fault the tongue-in-bill high spirits of a movie like Howard the Duck.

Crude, adolescent and not very funny.

"Steel" isn't offensively exploitative, just awkward, goofy and terminally sluggish. But then, how fast-paced could a movie be whose central character clumps around in 75 pounds of body armor? [15 Aug 1997]

As an evening out: Its many faults notwithstanding, Bonfire does have at least one thing going for it. The movie is a mess, but, like Wise Guys, it's a lively mess.

I had fun watching Drop Dead Fred, but I want to take special care not to raise expectations unrealistically by overpraising it. The movie is no comic masterpiece, but it is consistently amusing in a way that sometimes reminded me of a kiddie picture and at other times of a more sophisticated comedy.

Superman IV is cinematic kryptonite. Not only could it kill the Superman series, it might also leave filmgoers feeling weak.

I am not going to try to tell you that this one-joke, talking-horse comedy is, in any meaningful sense, a good movie. What I am going to say is that it's a little better than my rock-bottom expectations led me to predict.

Movies like Wild Orchid give sex a bad name...The only thing to be said for this embarrassingly inept film is that, in its own schlocky way, it does intermittently manage to get a libidinous buzz going. This is not an especially tough thing for a movie with sex scenes to do, but it's something.

Mr. Magoo manages to be faithful to cartoon's format without capturing an iota of its charm. [26 Dec 1997, p.24]

Abetter title for Jaws The Revenge would be Jaws The Refund. A refund is what a lot of people who go to see this picture will demand. This Time It's Personal, the tag line for the new film's ad campaign, doesn't seem quite right either. This Time It's Terrible would have been more accurate.

Throughout the movie, there are occasional "joke" lines, most of which are pretty lame but at least they establish that this is all intended as comedy. For the most part, however, the humor depends upon the audience's finding the movie's repulsiveness funny.