Jean Oppenheimer

As good as all the actors are, the scuzzy characters are so one-dimensional that the film falls flat.

Overly broad and silly at times, the film also has an "important" message to pass along to its young viewers.

The voice acting is adequate, but it fails to convey the diversity or personality of "Chicken Run" or "Shrek."

Fame this film ain't.

Using humor to make a serious point, Arau suggests that without the millions of Hispanics...life in the Golden State would screech to a halt.

As an actress, she (July) is annoying as hell, with a quirkiness so labored, she seems to be begging for our affection. As a director she is much better.

The film provides solid entertainment for kids but lacks any real sense of wonder and magic.

Nelson has directed his actors--including David Arquette, Steve Buscemi and Daniel Benzali (no, this isn't a joke)--to speak in David Mamet-like cadence, all short, choppy sentences and staccato rhythms. It's a terrible mistake.

Although far superior to recent American fare such as "Alex and Emma," the film takes actors with quirky charms and places them in a homogenized, studiolike picture. What a waste.

Proves only intermittently engaging as its twisted plot loses energy and becomes confusing in the latter half.

The actors are capable, but the direction feels stilted, the pacing sluggish, and the story obvious. The film plays like an ABC after-school special.

The ideas behind the story are intriguing and could prompt endless hours of lively discussion, but the film proves surprisingly drab.

A mildly amusing romp.

Tea With Mussolini doesn't come close to John Boorman's captivating "Hope and Glory," which managed to address the terrible destructiveness and misery of the war as well as the magical adventure it offered its young protagonist.

Slick, glossy, and artificial.

The film is smart enough to aim for farce rather than whimsy or reality. The songs are still bland--"I hid the alarm clock," "too much lipstick"--but at least the characters are somewhat entertaining.

Doesn't come close to matching the emotional depth and power of Frank Perry's 1962 "David and Lisa," the most involving and affecting film I've ever seen about teenagers and mental illness.

If only good intentions were enough to redeem a picture, perhaps ABCD would be worth a look.

Viewers expecting another enchanting, whimsical tale of high energy and mischievous spirits will be sorely disappointed.

Everything that happens proves just as predictable as before.

If Campion has a message in all this -- something about the eternal battle of the sexes -- it is far from clear.

Never rises above the level of a 1950s-era adolescent romance novel.

Given the great premise and characters inherited from the first film, it's surprising that this sequel fails to match its predecessor's appeal. The humor is silly, broad, and surprisingly generic.

The problem with Secretary isn't that it is offensive or unnerving -- although you get the idea the filmmakers hoped it might be at least one of those. The problem is that the story is slow-moving and dull.

The real star of the film is the food, which is sliced, diced, shredded, rolled, sautéed and fricasseed to mouthwatering perfection.

The film was shot with six cameras simultaneously and the images are projected on six split screens, à la Mike Figgis' "Time Code." While the subject's appeal is limited and the film's 106-minute running time excessive, viewers who do respond to the pic will find it raw, real and cathartic.

Peet is still adorable, and a couple of twists enliven the plot, but the jokes are lame, the timing is off, the physical pratfalls are too broad, and there's still no chemistry between Perry and Henstridge.

The supposedly funny quips and shrugs that fill Jakob the Liar are tepid at best and embarrassingly shticky at worst. Some are simply in bad taste.

Manages to be gruesome and grisly, but not particularly creepy or frightening.

The fact that Romance was written and directed by a woman doesn't make the film any better; it simply makes it objectionable on other grounds.

The picture's biggest problem is that no one is sympathetic.

Proves an absolute chore to sit through.

That this mess should come from the hand of Istvan Szabo, the brilliant Hungarian director of "Mephisto" and "Colonel Redl," is the real shocker.

The Dying Gaul becomes so overwrought in the last act that it ends up as pure histrionics.

It's like an amateur theater production. Reiner rushes through the setup in such a mad dash that it feels like a cartoon.

There is something distinctly self-satisfied about Amy's Orgasm that rubs the viewer the wrong way. The film should come with a warning label: Vanity project ahead!

Meet Joe Black takes an interesting idea--Death assumes human form and comes to earth to learn about human existence--and reduces it to a flat, uninspired, interminably slow movie.

A wobbly Basinger and a feeble screenplay doom I Dreamed of Africa.

Doesn't work as comedy or drama or anything in between.

Awful narration almost ruins the ghostly, gorgeous Running Free.

The predominantly amateur cast is painful to watch, so stilted and unconvincing are the performances. Poor Roth has nobody to play against and flounders in trying to keep the ship upright. Herzog aims for a kind of operatic sweep that he fails to achieve.

Numbingly feeble -- The dialogue is witless, the situations are lame, the humor juvenile and the chemistry between the stars nonexistent.