John Hartl

Utterly lacks the spark that makes caper movies fun.

As a vehicle for Grammer, the movie seems a comfortable fit. But why bother with a big-screen part if it can't match what he's been doing for some time on Frasier? [01 Mar 1996, p.F3]

How many dead spots does it take to kill the genuinely funny moments in a romantic comedy? This question gets a severe workout in writer-actor-director Eric Schaeffer's second film: an alternately charming, predictable, hilarious and tedious exercise that holds your interest for about an hour. [8 March 1996]

The script resembles an especially anemic Afterschool Special. [12 Oct 1990, p.22]

Simply can't sustain interest for much of its final hour.

The casting was spot-on in “Dollhouse”; here it seems haphazard.

Franco makes the most of his showy scenes, and Garrett Clayton (known for “Teen Beach Movie” and other shows from the Disney Channel) is a convincing hunk. But only Christian Slater’s lonely voyeur suggests what “King Cobra” might have been.

My Father the Hero can be enjoyed as a travelogue (cinematographer Daryn Okada makes the Bahamas look especially seductive) and as the blandest, most nonthreatening kind of date movie. [4 Feb 1994, p.D19]

Cobbled together from so many sources that it never develops a narrative drive of its own.

Simplistic on one level, indecipherable on another, it's a most peculiar muddle.

The final scenes, which suggest an earnest science lesson presented by a weepy extraterrestrial in an alien planetarium, play like the work of an amateur filmmaker.

While Bounce may mark a sophomore slump for Roos, it's hardly the worst date movie out there.

Neeson might as well have phoned this one in.

The script is a minefield of ideas that need more work.

A few startling touches.

The script seems flimsy and disposable when compared with such similar takes on the subject as "Analyze This,""The Sopranos" and the upcoming "Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai."

It's "The Hustler with poker and without soul...For all its flash and occasional sizzle, "Rounders" is a disappointment.

Its pretensions eventually undo it.

This could be the year's most pretentious Hollywood film.

Story. Character. They used to mean something to George Lucas.

Instantly disposable ...Gooding appears tobe losing the momentum of his Jerry Maguire Oscar win two years ago.

The movie is such a mess that it seems to have been assembled from pieces randomly picked from the cutting-room floor.

(Smith) seems out of his depth in this talky, rambling religious satire.

Just because you can make a movie in a day doesn't necessarily mean moviegoers should take an hour and a half to watch it.

Curiously bland and flavorless.

A sophomore writing-directing effort from former film critic Rod Lurie.

It doesn't generate enough laughs to make up for the fact that you never figure out what he (a misogynistic USA Today columnist played by Richard Gere) sees in her (a dizzy small-town hairdresser played by Roberts). Or, for that matter, what she could ever see in him.

This fuzzily illustrated sermon is mostly an attempt to prove that the internal combustion engine is obsolete, and that oil companies everywhere are conspiring to wipe out alternative methods.