John Hartl

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Film.com, The Seattle Times
For 544 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 52% higher than the average critic
  • 4% same as the average critic
  • 44% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 2 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

John Hartl's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 64
Highest review score: 100 The Innocents
Lowest review score: 10 Drop Dead Gorgeous
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 340 out of 544
  2. Mixed: 113 out of 544
  3. Negative: 91 out of 544
544 movie reviews
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    • 48 Metascore
    • 25 John Hartl
    First Kid
    There's not much any actor can do with material as woeful as this. Pierce seems as charmless at the end of First Kid as he is in the early scenes, while Sinbad seems lost without a stand-up shtick. [30 Aug 1996]
    • The Seattle Times
    • 33 Metascore
    • 25 John Hartl
    The Glimmer Man
    The Glimmer Man is just as foolish and formulaic as it sounds. [05 Oct 1996, p.C3]
    • The Seattle Times
    • 35 Metascore
    • 20 John Hartl
    Loser
    In short: Don't expect a lot of laughs.
    • 28 Metascore
    • 25 John Hartl
    Graveyard Shift
    It's neither scary nor original. In fact, it's something of a chore to sit through. [27 Oct 1990, p.C3]
    • The Seattle Times
    • 46 Metascore
    • 38 John Hartl
    Predator 2
    The dumbest, goriest bone-cruncher of the season: an unnecessary and Arnold-less sequel to the Schwarzenegger science-fiction hit of three years ago. [21 Nov 1990, p.C3]
    • The Seattle Times
    • 45 Metascore
    • 38 John Hartl
    My Summer Story
    Unfortunately, everyone's trying too hard to recapture the original's wry tone, and Culkin lacks the gawky, impish charm that Billingsley brought to Shepherd's childhood alter ego. [06 Jul 1995, p.E1]
    • The Seattle Times
    • 67 Metascore
    • 25 John Hartl
    Man Bites Dog
    This wildly overpraised Belgian mock-documentary might have been a lacerating 10-minute Swiftian satire of the media's never-ending thirst for blood. Instead, it's a 95-minute reiteration of the obvious that manages simultaneously to offend and bore. [11 June 1993, p.24]
    • The Seattle Times
    • 62 Metascore
    • 20 John Hartl
    Restaurant
    It's hard to think of a single memorable line from Restaurant, even a memorably bad one.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 38 John Hartl
    Warlock
    The best that can be said of this campy but witless time-travel thriller is that it's acted with some authority. [12 Jan 1991, p.C7]
    • The Seattle Times
    • 42 Metascore
    • 25 John Hartl
    Stone Cold
    Stone Cold may be the morally bankrupt nadir of what is so far one of Hollywood's worst years. [17 May 1991, p.3]
    • The Seattle Times
    • 57 Metascore
    • 25 John Hartl
    The Fourth War
    Maybe there's a serious movie to be made about professional soldiers who can't thaw out now that the Cold War is melting. But The Fourth War plays like Laurel and Hardy's Tit For Tat in slow motion. [23 Mar 1990, p.24]
    • The Seattle Times
    • 57 Metascore
    • 38 John Hartl
    The People Under the Stairs
    Unfortunately, Craven's constant emphasis on cannibalism, child abuse and incest adds up to more unpleasantness than thrills. [02 Nov 1991, p.C3]
    • The Seattle Times
    • 55 Metascore
    • 38 John Hartl
    Pacific Heights
    So consistently unexciting, so monumentally unconvincing, so silly. [28 Sept 1990, p.22]
    • The Seattle Times
    • 52 Metascore
    • 38 John Hartl
    The Last Boy Scout
    The Last Boy Scout is no worse than Lethal Weapon, and it's slightly more tolerable than Hudson Hawk. The action scenes deliver, the storyline is efficiently handled (if utterly unoriginal), Wayans is an appealing foil, and Willis' wiseacre personality fits the character he's playing. [13 Dec 1991, p.35]
    • The Seattle Times
    • 51 Metascore
    • 30 John Hartl
    Girl, Interrupted
    Mangold ultimately can't displace memories of "An Angel at My Table," "Lilith," "The Snake Pit," "I Never Promised You a Rose Garden" and other, stronger accounts of young women placed in mental institutions.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 30 John Hartl
    What Lies Beneath
    Loses touch with its characters.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 38 John Hartl
    Poison Ivy
    Much of the time, for all the leering effort she puts into portraying this demonic tease, Barrymore just seems to be playing dress-up. She also needs a more responsive co-star than Gilbert, who gives a one-note performance in the part that should be at the story's center. [29 May 1992, p.18]
    • The Seattle Times
    • 50 Metascore
    • 38 John Hartl
    Cadillac Man
    An indigestible blend of sentiment and gross-out humor, Cadillac Man is an appalling choice for Robin Williams to have made at this stage in his career. [18 May 1990, p.28]
    • The Seattle Times
    • 49 Metascore
    • 38 John Hartl
    Dennis the Menace
    Dennis the Menace is essentially a live-action, 90-minute Roadrunner movie in which Dennis is the Roadrunner and Matthau and Lloyd take turns playing Wile E. Coyote. It's a lot funnier when it's seven minutes long and the tortured Coyote is made from oils, ink and paper. [26 June 1993, p.C5]
    • The Seattle Times
    • 49 Metascore
    • 20 John Hartl
    Romance
    Exists in some kind of limbo, between hard-core porn and European art film, and it's not likely to satisfy fans of either.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 30 John Hartl
    Pitch Black
    Quite shameless in imitating its predecessors.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 38 John Hartl
    Tokyo Decadence
    Tokyo Decadence includes what may be the only near-death experience ever played for laughs in a movie. [15 Oct 1993, p.D26]
    • The Seattle Times
    • 48 Metascore
    • 25 John Hartl
    The Dark Backward
    This stupefyingly unfunny attempt to create a midnight cult movie stars Judd Nelson as a talentless stand-up comic who becomes a celebrity when he grows a third arm out of the middle of his back. [26 Mar 1992, p.E2]
    • The Seattle Times
    • 47 Metascore
    • 38 John Hartl
    Mr. Jones
    Unfortunately, the script is so hopelessly superficial that very little of this registers. It's the work of Eric Roth, who wrote the unspeakable Billy Crystal comedy, "Memories of Me," and Michael Cristofer, a playwright whose most prominent previous screen credit was the disastrous "Bonfire of the Vanities."
    • 45 Metascore
    • 25 John Hartl
    The Little Rascals
    Cameos by Mel Brooks and Whoopi Goldberg add nothing, and there's not much of a storyline to stitch together the gags. [05 Aug 1994, p.E3]
    • The Seattle Times
    • 45 Metascore
    • 38 John Hartl
    The Good Son
    The plot is so filled with inconsistencies and lapses in logic, especially during the desperate concluding reels, that it's difficult to take seriously its proposition that some people are born evil. [24 Sep 1993, p.D12]
    • The Seattle Times
    • 45 Metascore
    • 38 John Hartl
    Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze
    What began as a feature-length toy commercial instantly disintegrates into MTV fodder. [22 Mar 1991, p.24]
    • The Seattle Times
    • 44 Metascore
    • 38 John Hartl
    The Prophecy
    A supernatural thriller that would like to be the new Exorcist, this hapless film has a promising villain and a sympathetic hero, but their confrontations are mostly anti-climactic. [02 Sep 1995, p.F3]
    • The Seattle Times
    • 41 Metascore
    • 30 John Hartl
    Woman on Top
    The visual fireworks and catchy score just underline the extreme superficiality of the material.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 25 John Hartl
    Career Opportunities
    It manages to combine the least appealing qualities of several previous Hughes productions - the obnoxiousness of the central character in "Ferris Bueller's Day Off," the tedium of the teen-age confessionals in "The Breakfast Club," the gimmicky plotting of "Home Alone." And it has nothing fresh to add in terms of casting, storyline or the kinds of comic insights about suburban life that sustain Hughes' best scripts. [30 March 1991, p.C5]
    • The Seattle Times
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