Joe Leydon

Arriving so soon after "A Knight's Tale" -- and the 25th-anniversary reissue of the classic "Monty Python and the Holy Grail," Black Knight is a textbook example of too much, too late.

The term “vanity project” doesn’t come close to adequately describing the hubristic folly that is Wheeler, an excruciatingly dull and self-indulgent faux documentary

One thing leads to another, at a pace that somehow feels frenetic and ponderous all at once.

It’s hard to imagine that even the least demanding of tykes will ask for a second sampling of this thoroughly second-rate animated feature, which has all the charm, and twice the volume, of a barking dog.

A clunky and cheesy disaster.

At once annoyingly hyper and underwhelmingly dull.

Much like a botched souffle that fails to rise, Simply Irresistible is a bland confection that remains doggedly earthbound while attempting flights of romantic fantasy.

[A] ponderously paced, needlessly convoluted and altogether unexceptional thriller.

Seldom has a pic been more appropriately titled than Disaster Movie, yet another frantically unfunny free-form farce.

Emerges as a formulaic thriller that plays more like direct-to-video fare than a megaplex-worthy feature.

Loosely plotted and wildly uneven farce.

Illicit is too tepid to qualify as an erotic thriller, or even a guilty pleasure, and the performances range from over the top to tiresomely obvious.

The Intruder offers few surprises of any sort.

The four leads are nothing if not game, and actually earn respect, along with a fair amount of sympathy, for their uninhibited willingness to go to extremes. But there are limits to what they can do to dispel the overall sense of mounting desperation as the gross-out tomfoolery grows ever more tedious.

For auds unwilling or unable to grapple with the subtle nuances of "Scooby Doo," Warners now gives us Kangaroo Jack, a shrill and silly farce.

Around the halfway mark, Desolation stops making sense altogether and spins off into the realm of free-form absurdity.

This half-baked potboiler leaves one with the nagging suspicion that it was produced simply to meet some sort of quota, and cast with actors who came on board only because they lost bets.

The lame mediocrity of Vampires Suck undeniably reps an advance for writer-directors Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer. By just about any other standard, however, this instantly forgettable trifle is fairly close to worthless.

Arguably the lamest of all the free-wheeling genre parodies that have taken flight since "Airplane!," Date Movie is stupefyingly unfunny in its attempts to mock romantic comedies, celebrities, reality TV shows and anything else that pops into the heads of its creators.

Being Frank isn’t very amusing, which normally would be the most damning thing one might say about an ostensible comedy. But that really isn’t the worst thing about it. There is something ineffably creepy about this contrived and mirthless farce.

An unsavory and unsatisfying blend of dumb plotting, leering lasciviousness and full-bore gore, pic should warp-speed to video shelves.

If Love, Actually had actually been as bad as its most vociferous detractors have long insisted, it would have looked and sounded a lot like this misfire.

This enervating muddle of paranormal nonsense manages the difficult feat of seeming frenzied and lethargic all at once, while building toward the sort of ludicrous cop-out climax that often incites die-hard genre fans to shout rude things at the screen.

The term “freewheeling” does not begin to describe the slapdash, anything-goes quality of the screenplay co-written by Troma mogul Kaufman.

A numbingly pretentious approach to a moldy premise -- a handful of strangers interacting amid rubble in wake of WWIII.

There doesn’t appear to be any purpose at all to the random exchanges and interactions that pass for a plot.

A strident, painfully repetitive and hopelessly stage-bound drama about self-indulgent twentysomethings on the fringes of the L.A. film scene.

By turns laughably simplistic and confoundingly muddled as it charts the "final battle" between good and evil.

Anemic action-fantasy.

Exuberantly rude and crude, but generally more frantic than genuinely funny.

Action pics rarely come much more blandly generic than Extreme Ops, an instantly forgettable snow-and-stuntwork extravaganza.

Hopelessly stagebound, despite halfhearted efforts to open up what’s basically a talky two-hander, and risibly pretentious in the manner of soft-core porn that’s no sexier than glossy ads for expensive perfume.

[A] drearily lame time-waster.

Silly script, broad slapstick and overstated lead perfs by B-team cast might be acceptable to target audience.

Obviously the product of minimal effort by all parties involved, Strange Wilderness is a slovenly, slapped-together stoner comedy.

Grotesquely smutty and obnoxiously overbearing, this is a pitiful excuse for a comedy.

Some bad movies trigger swells of anger and outrage, while others prompt industrial-grade snark and scorn. And then there are leaden clunkers like Just Getting Started that provoke an ineffable sense of sadness as one considers how much time, money and talent has been squandered on something so thoroughly useless.

As tedious as rush-hour traffic and as bland as a communion wafer.

Latenight cable TV filler disguised as a feature film.

Dutch is dreadful. It’s a shambling, rambling recycling of clichés and conventions from ’70s Blaxploitation fare mixed with stilted murder-trial melodrama and half-baked morsels of sociopolitical topicality. But, really, to describe this rancid slice of ineptitude that way is to risk making it sound a lot more interesting than it is.

Lazy, lame and painfully unfunny, Meet the Spartans is yet another scrambled-genre parody.

Ranks as the most slapdash comedic star vehicle to hit screens since Harland Williams misfired with the career-stalling "RocketMan."

It's debatable whether the original 1974 "Black Christmas" is, as its most rabid fans claim, the mother of all slasher movies. But there can be no argument regarding the scant merits of its slapdash, soporifically routine remake, suitable only for the least discriminating of gore hounds.

The series' quest for different and challenging Pokemon reaches a nearly absurd endpoint this time.

With plenty of cheap shocks but little real suspense, Hoboken Hollow is nothing more than an uninspired cavalcade of carnage, much of it shamelessly gratuitous.

It seems even more slapdash and desperately unfunny than their earlier work.

A sloppy and shoddy piece of work, filled with just about every cliche and caricature common to low-budget, low-brow comedies with predominantly African-American casts.

Scarcely seems worth the expenditure of time, money and talent.

Even if you’re willing to forgive the laughably fake beards, the unconvincing computer-generated imagery, and a man-versus-lion skirmish that might have embarrassed Ed Wood, the overall clunkiness of this enterprise may tempt you to shout rude things at the screen.

A plodding patchwork of derivative fantasy-adventure, medieval production design, risible dialogue, unimpressive CGI trickery and haphazardly edited action sequences.

How late can a thriller spring a plot twist that at least partially compensates for all the cavernous plot holes, risible dialogue, and ludicrously illogical behavior that precede it? Probably not nearly as late as the makers of Replicas wait before introducing a third-act reveal that brazenly acknowledges just how silly things have been up to that point.

A new standard for wretched excess is established by Inspector Gadget, a joyless and charmless disaster in which state-of-the-art special effects are squandered on pain-in-the-backside folly.

More uselessly redundant and shamelessly money-grubbing than most third-rate horror sequels.

It's doubtful that anyone, even executors of Greene's literary estate, will be able to discern much of the source material in this frenetic trifle.

Inoperable is insufferable.

There are bad movies, and then there are worse movies, and then there are full-bore misfires such as Is That a Gun in Your Pocket?

NOLA Circus (the title refers to both a lead character and the abbreviation for New Orleans) is the kind of hideously unfunny folderol in which most cast members are encouraged to act at the top of their lungs to compensate for the witless script.