Jay Boyar

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Orlando Sentinel
For 396 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 56% higher than the average critic
  • 2% same as the average critic
  • 42% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 1.9 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Jay Boyar's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 64
Highest review score: 100 The Age of Innocence
Lowest review score: 0 Revenge
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 209 out of 396
  2. Mixed: 140 out of 396
  3. Negative: 47 out of 396
396 movie reviews
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    • 100 Metascore
    • 100 Jay Boyar
    Vertigo
    The real force of Vertigo, though, comes from Hitchcock's intimate depiction of perversity. Seldom has obsession stood so nakedly revealed. [Restored version; 15 Nov 1996, p.20]
    • Orlando Sentinel
    • 38 Metascore
    • 75 Jay Boyar
    Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit
    In Sister Act 2, these energized musical numbers and the sparkling comedy work together in ways that are very hard to resist. And considering how terribly resistible (to me, at least) last year's Sister Act was, the sequel seems like a movie miracle. [10 Dec 1993]
    • Orlando Sentinel
    • 38 Metascore
    • 60 Jay Boyar
    Sliver
    And for a while, anyway, the filmmakers capitalize on this irresistible premise, winning our complicity in their thriller's voyeuristic game with slick visuals and a delicious mood of anticipation. [22 May 1993, p.E1]
    • Orlando Sentinel
    • 38 Metascore
    • 80 Jay Boyar
    Navy Seals
    Navy Seals stands out among this summer's violence-oriented pictures as the only one that doesn't leave your brain feeling like mashed potatoes. There are plenty of exploding bombs in this picture, not to mention various other forms of destruction...But the action is orchestrated so sensitively that it's both aesthetically satisfying and emotionally resonant. There's a texture to the violence in Navy Seals that's completely absent in this summer's kaboom cartoons.
    • 38 Metascore
    • 50 Jay Boyar
    Amos & Andrew
    You would call Amos & Andrew a comedy of errors if it were actually funny. I suppose the precise term is an attempted comedy of errors - or maybe just a turkey. [05 Mar 1993, p.19]
    • Orlando Sentinel
    • 37 Metascore
    • 50 Jay Boyar
    Striptease
    If you get stuck at Striptease, my advice is to relax and try to enjoy its occasional pleasures.
    • 37 Metascore
    • 25 Jay Boyar
    Cutthroat Island
    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]
    • Orlando Sentinel
    • 36 Metascore
    • 40 Jay Boyar
    Color of Night
    Color me dissatisfied with Color of Night. For starters, it's a murder mystery with a really obvious solution. How obvious? It's so embarrassingly obvious that even I figured it out - and I can never figure these things out.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 37 Jay Boyar
    Bird on a Wire
    Nominally a romantic action-comedy, this Goldie Hawn-Mel Gibson picture is actually a mind-numbingly raucous exploitation flick with occasional bad jokes and mild sex scenes. [18 May 1990, p.21]
    • Orlando Sentinel
    • 36 Metascore
    • 40 Jay Boyar
    Under the Cherry Moon
    In Under the Cherry Moon, the self-styled auteur is obviously aiming for a romantic tragedy with occasional lighthearted moments. What he ends up with, however, is purest camp.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 25 Jay Boyar
    Graffiti Bridge
    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]
    • Orlando Sentinel
    • 36 Metascore
    • 60 Jay Boyar
    Pure Luck
    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]
    • Orlando Sentinel
    • 36 Metascore
    • 25 Jay Boyar
    Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man
    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]
    • Orlando Sentinel
    • 36 Metascore
    • 25 Jay Boyar
    Striking Distance
    This is ugly. [20 Sept 1993, p.D2]
    • Orlando Sentinel
    • 36 Metascore
    • 50 Jay Boyar
    Johnny Mnemonic
    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]
    • Orlando Sentinel
    • 35 Metascore
    • 0 Jay Boyar
    Revenge
    Revenge isn't sweet. It's crude, ugly, pretentious, repulsive, obnoxious and just about unwatchable.
    • 34 Metascore
    • 60 Jay Boyar
    Freejack
    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]
    • Orlando Sentinel
    • 34 Metascore
    • 30 Jay Boyar
    Jingle All the Way
    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]
    • Orlando Sentinel
    • 34 Metascore
    • 25 Jay Boyar
    Men at Work
    Estevez set out to make a movie about garbage and ended up with a movie that actually is garbage. [27 Aug 1990, p.C1]
    • Orlando Sentinel
    • 34 Metascore
    • 60 Jay Boyar
    The Clan of the Cave Bear
    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.
    • 34 Metascore
    • 25 Jay Boyar
    Mr. Destiny
    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]
    • Orlando Sentinel
    • 33 Metascore
    • 20 Jay Boyar
    Son of the Pink Panther
    This movie will finally kill off the series.
    • 33 Metascore
    • 50 Jay Boyar
    North
    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]
    • Orlando Sentinel
    • 33 Metascore
    • 20 Jay Boyar
    Son in Law
    Let's just say that compared to Son-in-Law, Green Acres is Noel Coward.
    • 33 Metascore
    • 50 Jay Boyar
    Jade
    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]
    • Orlando Sentinel
    • 31 Metascore
    • 50 Jay Boyar
    Getting Even with Dad
    Home Alone-style slapstick with occasional (almost random) heart-tugging. [17 Jun 1994, p.27]
    • Orlando Sentinel
    • 31 Metascore
    • 50 Jay Boyar
    Fire Birds
    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]
    • Orlando Sentinel
    • 30 Metascore
    • 50 Jay Boyar
    The NeverEnding Story II: The Next Chapter
    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]
    • Orlando Sentinel
    • 28 Metascore
    • 25 Jay Boyar
    Return to the Blue Lagoon
    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.
    • 28 Metascore
    • 60 Jay Boyar
    Howard the Duck
    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.
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