Jay Carr

The sequel goes down the tubes by spreading itself across four time zones and inviting comparison to the original by spending most of its time back in 1955, where another mess must be set right. [22 Nov 1989, p.35]

You couldn't ask for a better setting for a horror movie. What you could ask for is a better script.

Alien Nation quickly abandons any possibility of an equivalently fascinating world for the formulas of a routine cop movie. [7 Oct 1988, p.40]

It's two hours of slumming in a vision of hell hatched from bourgeois comfort. That, and not its unsavory subject matter, is what makes it bummer theater.

Except for a few coups de style, Amateur is a screenful of cool nothingness. [05 May 1995]

Isn't even worth a glance.

Village of the Damned has everything you want in a horror movie but the horror. [28 Apr 1995, p.90]

Takes a vacation from quality.

Consumerism is running more amok than ever, but this satire of it isn't.

Part of the reason Pet Sematary is so pedestrian is that its leads - Dale Midkiff and Denise Crosby - are uncharismatic. And director Mary Lambert, of Siesta and music video fame, doesn't know how to build and pace her material. [21 Apr 1989, p.46]

Awful in ways that are just clever enough often enough to make it intermittently watchable.

A lot of striking pictures in this would-be feminist "Braveheart," but a film that's pretty flat and earthbound because of the limitations of the figure at its center.

Meretricious without being entertaining, it's an easy game -- and an easier film -- to sit out.

A fatally insubstantial film.

National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation is yet another factory product that plays more like a marketing strategy than a comedy. Like the other farces bearing the National Lampoon brand label, it's a comedy of obliviousness - family man Chevy Chase refuses to alter his sentimental notions of family rituals despite repeatedly being slammed in the face with evidence of how far short of his expectations they fall. Here, the word "vacation" is a misnomer. The Griswold family, headed by Chase, doesn't go anywhere. Neither does the film.

Flirt has its moments, and Ewell and Nikaidoh are auspicious additions to the Hartley rep company. But Flirt will appeal mostly to Hartley completists. [23 Aug 1996]

Road House is the kind of action movie whose rigging is so blatant that there can be no air of heroism about it. Although Swayze and Sam Elliott, in the role of his mentor, have the decency to look sheepish most of the time, there's no end to the cynicism and merchandising on screen, especially in the sex scenes. [19 May 1989, p.45]

It seems endless. It's also unusually crude and stupid, even for an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie.

There are some sweet impulses in first-time director Marc Rocco's Dream a Little Dream, but it's a mess. [3 March 1989, p.47]

In the Mouth of Madness is firmly lodged in the armpit of boredom. [03 Feb 1995, p.55]

Occasionally wills itself to rude, crude life. But most of the time it's pretty limp.

The tame, confused script eventually sinks the film, although Field shows skill directing actors.

Son-in-Law (bet you can't guess the ending) would be brain-on-vacation fun if it weren't so smug and patronizing. [2 July 1993, p.44]

But Skin Deep hasn't the energy level or the inventiveness to sustain the demands of sex farce. There's only one sight gag as funny, involving glow-in-the-dark prophylactics. There's also only one role that's sympathetic. As usual, it's the Julie Andrews role of long-suffering wife, played by Alyson Reed. One last complaint: In the guise of being unflinching about dancing on the edge of outrage, the film reveals a mean streak involving cruel things done to dogs. Skin Deep spends what seems like a lot of time living up to - or is it down to? - its name. [3 March 1989, p.47]

It's not boring to watch, but in the end it's too lame and too tame. [21 Apr 1995]

Isn't going to be a contender

Avalanches are nothing compared to the deadening touch of the stereotyping and audience-insulting simplicities in the scenic but brain-dead Vertical Limit.

It's a lame and painfully overextended satire of homophobia.