John Patterson

Even more problematic is the script's clumsy, sprawling architecture, Sheridan's clubfooted sense of pacing and his grubby, indistinct visuals. The only upside? The Chieftains aren't on the soundtrack.

A coercive script by James Kearns, and some middling direction by Nick Cassavetes, can't rob the movie of an undeniable, headlong crowd-pleasing power.

Although its lushness and penchant for melodrama are the cinematic equivalent of Billy Sherrill's syrupy string arrangements for George Jones, Tammy Wynette and Charlie Rich circa 1973, the movie deftly manages to remain sweet without becoming saccharine.

Jolie hogs the spotlight as usual, leaving romantic interest Ed Burns struggling to register and only Shaloub -- fetid, dirty, soulful -- with his dignity intact.

Jackson and Levy strike only damp sparks off each other, and they seem to have been introduced to each other --without benefit of rehearsal -- mere moments before the director cried "Action!"

Remarkably, it took four writers to concoct this tin-eared, slighter-than-slight farce.

Disfigured by flabby dialogue (“You can't put a number on my dreams!”), unfunny pratfalls and criminally slack pacing.

Richer and cleverer than any Merchant Ivory movie in memory.

The end result is like cold porridge with only the odd enjoyably chewy lump.

Somehow poor pacing and this lack of visual variety manage to make a great show seem boring.

Oddly anemic and muted -- BBC Saturday-night material.

The always-watchable Bologna is the adhesive holding together this slight and gentle romantic comedy, lending it perhaps more conviction and authority than the material warrants.

As Tweedy talks about canning his stockbroker and repairing his pool, you yearn for a few airborne TV sets or nude groupies on the nod to liven things up. And what do we get? Diet Coke! Tonight is definitely not the night.

Koppelman and Lieven's toneless, generic direction style is slack, not slick, and they handle actors like livestock. Only John Malkovich, as Matty's psychotic uncle, retains his dignity.

The narrative chronology is so heavily hacked about, its tenses so addled and the material so thinly spread across so many characters, one can scarcely keep it straight in one's head without going cross-eyed.

No matter how “real” things appear, scenarios and story arcs are relentlessly imposed upon the partay-cipants so as to finesse a narrative as crudely overdetermined and howlingly predictable as any studio-manufactured fiction.

Oscillating gracelessly between the coarse and the merely saccharine, 50 First Dates, directed with zero visual or comedic flair by Peter Segal (Anger Management, Tommy Boy), showcases Sandler's cuddlier side as it reprises the tepid chemistry that he and Barrymore road-tested in "The Wedding Singer."

A little bit "pi," a little bit "julien donkey-boy," a little bit "Eraserhead," Buddy Boy doesn't equal these, but offers bizarre pleasures of its own.

The interchangeable males all resemble Freddie Prinze Jr., and Anderson's direction is no less anemic, making one yearn for an Escape/Quit button that, sadly, doesn't exist in this medium.

Marks no discernible improvement on its predecessors "Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo" and "The Animal," though the sight of the deeply unprepossessing Schneider all dolled up for girlie business is good for a few shallow chuckles.

In RV, the downwardly spiraling career trajectories of Robin Williams and director Barry Sonnenfeld intertwine like the ropes of a tangled parachute, and all the helpless viewer can do is look on aghast as the whole abortive fiasco plummets toward Earth.

Irish director David Caffrey and English screenwriter Jeremy Drysdale have, respectively, zero sense of pace and a tin-eared grasp of period speech, and together fail either to let us care about their characters or to create any sense of a living era.

Extraordinary is the very last adjective that comes to mind.

A cut above the usual teenage-wasteland movie.

Occasionally the Woo-inflected action sequences - particularly a horse stampede through town on hanging day, and an escape from a moving train - rouse the film from its anti-historic, even mythophobic torpor.

If you've never seen the original, you may have no idea what's going on.

Intriguing for a while, then steadily more confusing and finally just incoherent.

Catalog of ugly female stereotypes and rotten jokes.