Jay Boyar

Represents a new low for the form. Watching this one, you may be tempted to throw the baby movie out with the bath water.

There are theme park attractions with stronger plots and more compelling characters. [26 May 1995, p.17]

The earlier film (and much of the television program) worked for adults by creating a youngster's fantasy world with an eerie fidelity. It got us to laugh by reminding us of the child within ourselves. Watching the new film, however, all we're reminded of is that we outgrew kiddie movies a long time ago.

Noisy and (nearly) awful, Noises Off is the sort of movie that gives filmed theater a bad name. Based on Michael Frayn's popular, Tony-nominated play, the screen version is so lame that even without having seen a stage production of the material I can tell that the film doesn't do it justice.

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.

The Exorcist III isn't crudely exploitative so much as it's just unendurably pretentious. [24 Aug 1990, p.4]

Instead of displaying the grim wit of RoboCop, RoboCop 2 is crude and punishing. [23 June 1990, p.E1]

Children will undoubtedly enjoy the ninja flick a lot more than their parents will, and it probably won't even give most kids nightmares. But couldn't a steady diet of this sort of thing help to desensitize very young children to real violence? If so, that's awful - not awesome - dudes.

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

Crude, adolescent and not very funny.

The most mortifying way for a rock star to mess up is for him to direct the dumb movies he stars in. This is the Prince Method. [09 Nov 1990]

City Slickers II is not merely one of the worst movies of the year. It's one of the worst movie sequels of all time - and, by the way, one of the least necessary. [10 June 1994, p.21]

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

Cutthroat Island isn't so much a movie as it is a burial at sea. As a longtime Geena Davis fan, I hope she won't go down with the ship. [22 Dec 1995, p.M10]

Connery doesn't have many scenes, and he does manage to keep his dignity while he is on the screen. That's more than I can say for a lot of the actors in this movie. [09 Sep 1994]

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]

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

Medicine Man is bad medicine - very bad. A parable about mankind's folly, it's also a a prime example of it. [08 Feb 1992, p.E1]

The problem is that producer-turned-director Irwin Winkler (Night and the City, Guilty by Suspicion) simply has no idea what he's doing. I take that back. He knows what a producer ought to know: how to latch onto a hot topic and a hot star. Winkler also appears to have picked up enough from the directors he has worked with to give his film a certain second-hand slickness.

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]

Many years ago, Mel Brooks made up his mind about what was funny and he hasn't budged since. [30 July 1993, p.21]

Where The Last Picture Show was emotionally involving and dramatically episodic, Texasville is sprawling, badly paced and remote. [29 Oct 1990, p.C1]

With DiCaprio and Thewlis cast as 19th-century French poets Arthur Rimbaud and Paul Verlaine in Total Eclipse, you'd figure that the new film would almost have to be worth watching -if only for the acting. You would be mistaken. [01 Dec 1995, p.23]

The folks who made The 'burbs appear to be card-carrying members of the School of Non-Urban Humor. Basic to the philosophy of this school is the misapprehension that anything occurring outside city limits is intrinsically amusing.

Not only does the new film generally fail to skewer TV's follies, it isn't even as entertaining as television. And I'm not talking about really good television, like Seinfeld and Murphy Brown. I'm talking about the usual stuff, like Three's Company and Mork & Mindy. [17 Aug 1992, p.D2]

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

Far-fetched as the premise is, I was willing to give the film the benefit of the doubt for the sake of the impressive cast. But as Flatliners rolled along, its pretentiousness became increasingly toxic.

This movie will finally kill off the series.