John Hartl

Hardly anyone comes off looking good in this glitzy and faintly ludicrous melodrama. [16 Feb 1990, p.34]

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."

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]

There's no emotional pay-off when the characters change under pressure. The audience never knows enough about them to care when they demonstrate bravery or resourcefulness, and there's no chemistry between the people who are supposed to be deeply attached to each other. [06 Oct 1990, p.C7]

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 Next Karate Kid is harmless as children's entertainment, but for 104 very long minutes, there isn't a recognizable human being in sight.

Unfortunately, the script by Amanda Silver and Rick Jaffa (a husband-and-wife team who previously collaborated on "The Hand That Rocks the Cradle") eventually throws out all ambiguities and endorses Field's actions, even suggesting that her husband and Mantegna's policeman just aren't committed enough to seek justice...It's a revolting development in a transparently manipulative movie, created by people who clearly know better. [12 Jan 1996]

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]

So consistently unexciting, so monumentally unconvincing, so silly. [28 Sept 1990, p.22]

Linda Blair and Leslie Nielsen deserve better than the scattershot script for Repossessed, a desperate spoof of The Exorcist that generates perhaps two belly laughs, three well-earned smiles and about 287 groaners. [29 Sep 1990, p.B7]

Production values could not be cheaper for a major-studio film. An extended woodsy scene with a collapsing cabin, supposedly set in the Wenatchee National Forest, so obviously makes use of tiny models that you expect the artifice to become part of the joke. It never does. Like so much of Black Sheep, it's a missed opportunity.

Stardom just doesn't have enough anger or conviction to carry it to a satisfying finish.

Loses touch with its characters.

Has a cute idea. Which it promptly runs into the ground.

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.

So campy...may be good for a few laughs.

A Boring Young Couple.

The visual fireworks and catchy score just underline the extreme superficiality of the material.

You'll laugh, but you'll hate yourself by the time you're out of the theater.

Underwhelming thriller.

Quite shameless in imitating its predecessors.

The travelogue-style photography is soothing, the bodies are pretty and the music isn't offensive, but feature-length movies can't survive on the ingredients for a standard airline commercial.

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]

Stone Cold may be the morally bankrupt nadir of what is so far one of Hollywood's worst years. [17 May 1991, p.3]

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 script by David Stenn (21 Jump Street), which also includes a hoary subplot involving blackmail, a kidnapping and a guilty family secret, is essentially a way of tying together a collection of familiar-looking music videos that are so loosely connected to the story that they have about the same impact as commercials. [19 Oct 1991, p.C7]

Fire Birds reduces it all to kiss-kiss-bang-bang, and the implication that a few theater-rattling explosions will turn the enemy to toast forever. The only blessing is that it runs less than 90 minutes.

The Museum of Modern Art has committed Tobe Hooper's original Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) to its permanent collection. This spin-off, which has none of that film's brutal energy, won't be joining it. The state of Texas ought to sue the makers of Leatherface: Texas Chainsaw Massacre III for defamation of character. [13 Jan 1990, p.C5]