John Hartl

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."

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]

Watching Phoenix in his last film, I couldn't help thinking of James Dean's final performance, as the cranky loner, Jett Rink, in "Giant." [12 Nov 1993, p.D3]

An OK debut effort, but like so many "Pulp Fiction" wannabes, it lacks freshness and energy.

The performances are more interesting than the convoluted plot. [24 Apr 1992, p.26]

Miscast and nervously directed. [11 Oct 1996]

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]

Judgment Night is almost completely lacking in conviction and originality. But Leary does a fair Dennis Hopper imitation, Gooding does his best with an insulting role, and the ending is witty enough not to give us the undying villain it leads us to expect. [15 Oct 1993, p.D27]

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

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]

Shanley demonstrates a fresh, giddy talent for visualizing his eccentric comedy ideas. [9 Mar 1990, p.20]

An Almodovar-like blend of laughs, drama and uplift, filled with the kinds of pop-art colors and pop-out performances that Almodovar loves.

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]

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]

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.

What began as a feature-length toy commercial instantly disintegrates into MTV fodder. [22 Mar 1991, p.24]

Has its clunky and wince-worthy moments, it does explore some new territory, and there are moments when it's quite fresh and moving.

Although Stella is intelligently made and generally well-acted, there were plenty of dry eyes at a packed preview screening earlier this week. [2 Feb 1990, p.25]

What rescues the movie, time and again, is the strength of Jones' and Jackson's performances.

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.

The idea may have sounded great in film school. As written and directed by B.W.L. Norton, that's where it should have stayed. Still, the music of the period is well-used, and Charlie Martin Smith, Candy Clark and Cindy Williams rise above the script problems. [05 Dec 1991, p.F3]

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

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]

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]

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]

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]

Neeson might as well have phoned this one in.

Despite the anti-greed message, too much of For Love or Mone" is reminiscent of Fox's glib 1980s vehicles, especially "The Secret of My Success" and the TV series "Family Ties." Reportedly he's trying to break free of this syndrome, but at this point he needs a vehicle that would spell that out clearly. Too often this one plays like "For Love and Money." [1 Oct 1993, p.D18]