John Hartl

The chief distinction of the picture, and what makes it more guilty pleasure than patience-tester, is Pakula's strong visual sense, which is reminiscent of his work on "The Parallax View." [16 Oct 1992, p.3]

While writer-director Frank Darabont often fails to make King's story plausible, that's no fault of the actors. The performances are the movie's strong suit.

Ricochet is gruesome, contrived and often laughable when it's trying hardest to be thrilling. But the exaggerated antagonism between the two central characters keeps it from becoming dull. [05 Oct 1991, p.C3]

The picture is part slapstick comedy, part tearjerker, but the mixture rarely works, and sometimes it's actively irritating.

If you plan to build an entire movie around a whining boor, his whining should have some accuracy or wit. His boorishness should at least suggest complexity, some motivation beyond the obvious. [09 Sep 1994, p.H32]

Blackboard Jungle created this genre (and most of its cliches) more than 40 years ago. 187 doesn't add much more than outrage and resignation. [30 Jul 1997]

Not a conventional love story, and perhaps it's not a love story at all. After more than two hours, you're left wondering what it is.

There's so much blood, sweat and craziness that you stop laughing with first-time screenwriter Harry Bean's script and begin laughing at it. Long before it reaches the fever pitch of a hysterical finale, you may also find yourself looking at your watch. [12 Jan 1990, p.21]

As Walton, D.B. Sweeney recalls Richard Dreyfuss's UFO-obsessed family man in Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind. He's a sweet, semi-looney dreamer who all but invites the aliens to take him, and his performance is the most appealing thing about the picture. [12 Mar 1993, p.3]

A slickly contrived studio product, as insincere as it is ineffectual. [12 Oct 1990, p.28]

They've simply turned the book into an anything-goes burlesque with such a contemporary flavor that even 1990s street slang is permissible. [12 Nov 1993, p.D27]

Arty slow motion, deliberately distorted photography and even bits of animation are tossed into the stew with the same abandon that Oliver Stone brought to the story Tarantino wrote for Natural Born Killers. But Avary's movie lacks the strong performances and quirky humor that made Reservoir Dogs more than just another low-budget exercise in excess. [09 Sep 1994, p.H29]

The director is Paris Barclay, a graduate of Harvard, music videos and rewrite jobs on other studios' scripts. Unfortunately, his directing debut is little more than an idea for a movie. [13 Jan 1996, p.F7]

Most of the picture plays like a collection of action-movie cliches, much like the facetious catalogue that Timothy M. Gray recently compiled in Variety under the heading "Blueprints for blockbusters: Let's go, c'mon!" [2 Aug 1996]

Unfortunately, Kevin Anderson, the former Steppenwolf actor who was so impressive re-creating his stage role in Alan Pakula's film of "Orphans" and impersonating Bobby Kennedy in "Hoffa," can do absolutely nothing with the braying, sexist yuppie who rents the apartment out to Broderick and Sciorra. [1 May 1993, p.C9]

It takes a special actor's grace to survive a script as lame as My Fellow Americans, and James Garner has it. Without appearing to break a sweat, Garner makes each grotesquely desperate attempt at humor look smooth and assured. In his hands, everything seems funnier than it is.

Neither Spader nor Amick can get past the generic nature of the characters they're playing, nor can they make up for Kazan's timid approach to their supposedly steamy love scenes. The nude Spader is so carefully draped and arranged that he could be posing for a soft-core parody, while Amick resorts to doing an impersonation of a haughty 1940s glamour queen. [6 May 1994, p.D31]

It may take more than Caro Diario for Americans to acquire the Moretti taste. [21 Oct 1994, p.H42]

Carrey's performance, and Forman's lively attempts to ask serious questions about the nature of comedy, keep it interesting. Certainly it's never dull.

What a dynamite cast. What a savvy director. And what a soggy comedy they're all stuck in. [02 July 1997, p.E5]

Like "American Beauty" without the fangs - or the magic.

While it's no breakthrough, this may be the best of Disney's popular Ernest comedies starring Jim Varney as an amiable moron in the Jerry Lewis tradition. [11 Oct 1991, p.23]

This sports comedy starts out as a rowdy delight in the tradition of "Slapshot," but it loses its sense of the outrageous and quickly turns ho-hum.

They're obviously smart people, but they end up painting themselves into a corner with this cast. Stern, the hammiest of the lead actors, is allowed to dominate the early scenes, and he rarely lets go. His bug-eyed act is getting stale, as is Aykroyd's tendency to walk through roles like this. The freshest element here is Wayans, who gets top billing in the ads but somehow winds up seeming like a supporting player. [19 Apr 1996]

Despite all of the personalized Wenders touches, it ultimately resembles many a top-heavy, star-laden, special-effects-driven production from the major-studio assembly lines.

Presented as a Vietnam War comedy, Operation Dumbo Drop steadfastly refuses to be funny. [28 Jul 1995, p.D3]

The special effects are quite impressive for a low-budget production, although the classiest thing about it is the voice of Welles, whose verbal dramatization of the Martian invasion still chills. [27 Apr 1990, p.20]

MTV veteran and first-time director Jim Yukich makes the most of the flashy if uneven visual effects, which usually have a state-of-the-art quality but occasionally look as phony as matte paintings in 1950s biblical epics. [04 Nov 1994, p.I39]