Johnny Oleksinski

The packaging of “Barbie” is a lot more fun than the tedious toy inside the box.

Dumb Money, with a predictable script by Lauren Schuker Blum, Rebecca Angelo and Ben Mezrich, rambles on and on with an unwaveringly lethargic tone and zero buildup of energy or anticipation. All the while, the audience has little investment in this dud about investing.

One sequence is amusing: a number called “Fairytale Life (After the Spell)” in which panini grills and espresso machines sing along like they live in Pee-wee’s Playhouse. You struggle to care about the rest.

The drama is a crude blend of history and pulpy romance, with maudlin performances from the two leads.

The races of Trading Paint, however, are as exciting as a Ford Taurus trying to parallel park.

The plot plods along — they drive a bit, guy gets shot, they drive some more, guy gets shot — and the dialogue is bottom of the barrel.

A lot of this is typical rom-com fare. The genre is not boundary-pushing and that’s perfectly fine — ideal even. But Ryan doesn’t have the sparkle and fizz as a director to make this lacking material sing.

Blockers is the latest example of the millennium’s most dispiriting film trend: Stupid drunk people making stupid drunk decisions for two stupid hours.

Degreasing a stove is a more enjoyable way to spend your Saturday night.

In The Life of Chuck, the pieces come together much too obviously. And the takeaways — that a person is the product of experience, and don’t judge a book by its cover — are well-tread to the point of total flatness.

The once-great franchise is hardly reborn from the amber this time. It’s slammed by an asteroid yet again.

The new movie, directed by Joe Wright and written by Dinklage’s wife Erica Schmidt, ranks with the most lifeless adaptations. Even the swishy dances are a downer.

Providing a hint of redemption is Edgar-Jones, a naturally vulnerable actress who can turn the shallowest of material into something deep. We like Kya and are with her every step of the way, even though at over two hours there about 50 steps too many.

This whole half-baked sequel is a forced exercise, willed into being by the so-called “Keanussance” — society’s renewed love affair with Reeves. He’s a nice guy and a decent actor, but he’s made a lame movie. It’ll let down even hardcore fans.

In the end, what “Caught Stealing” has stolen is time and talent.

Carousel is one of those tundra, dimly lit living-room movies that snobs defend as closer to “real life.”

“First Steps” marks a slight improvement from the preceding trilogy of terror. But Marvel still can’t nail what should be one of its premiere attractions.

What’s said to be Marvel’s most powerful superhero ever is served Melatonin by Larson. There is precious little texture or detail, ups and downs, or emotions of any kind in her performance. The character, even when kicking ass, is a total bore. Such as it is, the film’s best moments are provided by Jackson and a hilarious cat.

Julian Fellowes would have been far better off writing another relaxed Christmas special to satisfy fans.

The failed attempt at cleverness in Lanthimos’ movie is that nobody is actually kind here; they are inordinately cruel. There’s nothing wrong with that — so is Richard III — but these exploits are not particularly entertaining or profound, only random and repetitive.

Ralph Fiennes as Gun’s eventual lawyer, however, is totally forgettable, as is much of the standard-issue, self-important docudrama. So much of Gregory Bernstein, Sara Bernstein and Gavin Hood’s screenplay arrives with a thud that it might’ve been written with clenched fists. Knightley’s overwrought performance doesn’t help either.

What was once a sophisticated, edgy, witty, sexy drama series has become “The Love Boat” Season 10. Though these wax figures’ love is even less exciting and neeeeew than that old show.

After two lousy sequels, here’s a pitch for Warner Bros.: “The Matrix Retirement.”

Music is totally unwatchable.

“Solo,” sadly, should be frozen forever in carbonite.

Nothing’s wrong with a few buckets of blood, but Perkins’ movie waters them down with its repetitious plot and weak attempts at humor. “The Monkey” strains to be a comedy as much as a horror film and effectively works as neither.

It’s a violently annoying and annoyingly violent ensemble piece speckled with “look how wacky we are!” characters that are impossible to put up with; a copycat Coen Brothers yarn with the depth of a tortilla.

That’s the worst thing about these new Scream films — they couldn’t spook a kitten. They’re much more concerned with so-so jokes and overly geeky observations about the horror genre. Yes, Scream always commented on other scary movies, but never so obnoxiously and repetitively as now.

Many diehards, in their slavish, zombie-like subservience to the MCU gods, will tell you that Sam Raimi (brilliant on the 2002 “Spider-Man”) has directed a horror movie. Lies! It’s as scary and visually arresting as “Van Helsing,” “Underworld” and “Hellboy 2.”

Wolfs, a so-called comedy written and directed by Jon Watts in which Clooney and Pitt play rival New York fixers tasked with discreetly disposing of a dead body, is a dreadful, laugh-free slog that tests the limits of what star power alone can salvage.

It’s a royal chore.

What they’ve chopped up is a cacophony of half-baked characters and rushed ideas that leave you puzzled and unsatisfied. A better title would be “The Chore.”

For a film that takes place largely in a basket, Harper manages an epic mood. Nonetheless, you can’t help but feel swindled by Hollywood’s hot air.

The abysmal “Gucci” would get a better grade, perhaps, if it was a term paper titled “How to Make the Assassination of a Famous Person Boring.”

Aspires to be a scary suburban satire like “Get Out” or “Hot Fuzz.” But watching adults murder or attempt to murder toddlers, teens and even a newborn baby just isn’t funny. At times, it’s downright sickening.

Who’s the audience for this movie? It’s not smart, scary or funny enough for adults and older teens, and it’s inappropriate for young kids.

I don’t mind Diesel and Cena starring in movies like this, because it helps keep them out of other, better movies. But to see folks such as Helen Mirren (doing her weird cockney accent again), Russell and Theron’s talents wasted on such schlock is a shame.

It’s Olsen’s emotional frailty that helps pump up a bad movie into a mediocre one.

The embarrassing drama — offensive, clunky, poorly written — sullies Eastwood’s storied legacy, and makes great actors such as Bradley Cooper and Dianne Wiest come off like amateurs.

Netflix needs to add a category for its new original film The Laundromat. Right under “Movies you might like” should be “Movies you will loathe.”

It’s a harrowing tale that deserves a much better movie than this insipid junk.

Leave her at the altar! She is “The Bride!,” one of the absolute worst movies I have had the displeasure of watching in this job.

On this overstuffed ride, we also learn where wise Rafiki, royal aide Zazu, evil Scar and even Pride Rock come from. Who cares? The backstories only make us crave the peerless 2D original.

Hocus Pocus 2 is also awful to the core, but charmless and too low stakes to keep our interest.

Ethan Coen’s road-trip comedy “Drive-Away Dolls” does not have that cinematic new-car smell. No, the stale scent is closer to months-old, unfinished McDonald’s Happy Meals and inexplicably maroon stains. The creaky vehicle has racked up so many miles, it barely starts. So tired and unappetizing, this dreadful film is.

Don’t expect a single novel element here — everything is recycled from the junkyard.

Where is Wright’s mastery of tone and zany-but-unnerving quick-cut style? It’s been replaced by a cacophony of assembly-line sci-fi noise in a blah “Blade Runner” that, depending on the scene, is either stupidly serious or seriously stupid.

Meet Moondog — a movie character you’ll want to punch in the face.

From beginning to end, the craft — directing, acting, writing, editing, design — is just not there.

Although it is a soft PG-13, The Adam Project is stylistically geared toward 5-year-olds who aren’t going to watch a movie about time travel and frayed parent-child relationships. Today’s teens and 20-somethings are too smart for a movie so dumb.

How would “Slightly less terrible!” look on a poster? That is my approved quote for Zack Snyder’s Justice League, a perverse exercise in fanboydom on HBO Max that tacks on two extra hours of footage to a maligned 2017 DC Comics movie to create a kind of new, still-bad movie.

Writer-director Michael Mohan’s “drama” tries to be a modern Rear Window (emphasis on “rear”), but Hitchcock it ain’t. The Voyeurs is a cheap, never-ending trifle that takes itself more seriously than Hamlet.

With “M3GAN 2.0,” the filmmakers have employed a bold strategy: Take a $180-million formula, shred it and forget it.

Moretz, meanwhile, acts like Little Red Riding Hood talking to her conspicuously hairy grandma — impossibly naive, and therefore dull and unbelievable. She’s a solid actress, but she shines best in indies or in parts with real edge. Greta is a camp-fest.

A couple of grand, intriguing ideas does not a movie make. Say it with me, folks: It’s the little things.

As blissfully simple as James Cameron’s original “Terminator” framework was, “Dark Fate” has a tendency to toss in unnecessary confusions.

Ronan has a flair for visuals, no doubt about it. And I liked looking at them. The trouble is his slideshow of impressive landscapes and environments evokes nothing deeper and, actually, is a roadblock to character development and story momentum. Scenic detours.

By the end of this derivative, heartless mess, you’ll conclude that a garbage dump is exactly where writer-producer James Cameron’s new project belongs.

For a film with the nuance of a nuke, Palmer’s by-the-numbers journey nods along like elevator music.

What was great fun before is mostly mopey and depressing now. A hunk, a hunk of burning IP.

Devil, make a better movie.

Really, though, it is just another tiresome and impenetrably brooding Gerard Butler movie in which no event seems to matter any more than the next one — and grimaces are mistaken for drama.

Branagh’s warped vision of these films as putrid, depressing slogs makes Death on the Nile interminable.

Fresh off of winning the Best Director Oscar for "Nomadland," Chloé Zhao has upchucked one of the MCU's worst movies in ages.

Murder on the Orient Express has been . . . murdered!

Coogan and Isla Fisher, as his friendly ex-wife, are well-cast, if too mean and fake. But their comic talents are wasted on Michael Winterbottom’s sorry attempt at a mockumentary. Actually, it’s a bit greedy.

Donna Summer’s disco classic “Last Dance” does a good job of summing up Steven Soderbergh’s new movie Magic Mike’s Last Dance: When it’s bad it’s so, so bad.

As always, Dracula sucks blood. But his latest movie simply sucks.

80 for Brady would be close to worthless were it not for the prodigious talents and chemistry of its marvelous cast.

I wanna feel the HEAT … but I don’t. On the contrary, the animatronic new Whitney Houston biopic “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” left me shivering from a gust of arctic air as it so clinically and lazily examines the tragic life of the famous singer.

In this new, totally unnecessary version of Dr. Seuss’ holiday favorite, the mean one (voiced by Benedict Cumberbatch) isn’t all that scary or cruel.

Linklater, a director who usually earns his sentiment, just can’t get the tone right. “Bernadette” is supposed to skewer the norms of family, suburban life and motherhood. While Bernadette should be a creature out of Wes Anderson, Blanchett and her director opt for “The Addams Family” instead. Nothing about it works.

Legends is the latest in a long line of terrible “Karate Kid” movies. A passing of the torch, such as it is, to the next inferior rip-off.

The story is far less gripping than the consistency of the hunky lead actor’s facial hair. For most of the two hours or so, the beard is perfect. Frozen in time.

Lucky “Day Shift” has an Oscar winner in Foxx, who’s appealingly heroic, and gags about a burning sensation on characters’ privates.

One of the worst depictions of our city ever filmed.

At the start, “The Cut” is an adequate, typical gloves-and-shoves picture. And then, with a snap of the fingers, director Sean Ellis’ film turns absolutely interminable.

It’s a shame that George Michael’s final major artistic contribution to the world is the crummy movie Last Christmas. In its shoddy attempt to make a splash in the British romantic-comedy genre, it amounts to nothing more than a careless whisper.

In order: bland, annoying and misused.

There simply aren’t enough synonyms for “loathsome” to do the new movie The Hunt justice. Perhaps if we expand into other languages. C’est détestable! È ripugnante!

“The Equalizer” should be locked in a room with “The Terminator.” Then this lousy series would finally be killed off.

The treacly trifle is just more of the same Hallmark-inspired Christmas white noise for people who defend these terrible, sappy movies as chicken soup for the couch potato’s soul.

I can’t speak to Bethan Roberts’ 2012 novel the film is based on, but the story’s climactic reveal is one of the most predictable in ages. It gets the award for Biggest Duh!

If Canadian director Bruce McDonald’s dreams are anything like the disgusting underworld we see in his new movie Dreamland, get the man a doctor.

Instead of smarts, we get farts. The movie is packed with gross body and sex humor, reductive characters (the gay assistant, the boss who should be fired) and delusions of insight. And Henson’s likable performance is so overblown, it could be sponsored by Red Bull.

You simply cannot believe you’re staring at megastars — so sapped of individuality and charisma they are. My barista could have been cast as the lead of this action-thriller, and the film would be absolutely no different.

"Rhapsody” has a shallow script, oversize performances and looks like it was shot in a sauna.

Amsterdam has every advantage imaginable. Doesn’t matter. It’s the worst movie of the year so far, and I will bow down to whatever comes along and tops it.

Watching it, unless you’re already a demented diehard fan, is utter agony.

The inferior second part, short but not nearly short enough, proves just how ill-prepared its creators were for the original’s success.

It’s hard to believe Costner left “Yellowstone” to make such an embarrassing, poorly told mess.

The best thing about the Escape Room film series is that it gives audience members clear directions in the title about what they should immediately do: Escape. Room. Get out of that theater and go see Black Widow instead. Run for your lives — and sanity!

Directed by Guy Nattiv, the sluggish film caves to the worst tendencies of forgettable biopics. Mirren is ensconced in prosthetics and a gray wig in hopes that a lookalike transformation can distract from bad writing and a total lack of insight.

Racially offensive quips, flagrant sexism and Tourette syndrome gags all contribute to this witless, scare-free junk.

The preachy “Showman” argues that Barnum should be celebrated for bringing “freaks” like the bearded lady and others out of the shadows and into his shows, but those characters are sketchily drawn.

It's not asking much that a thriller be scary or shocking. This one waffles between being predictable and absurd.

A film so rife with plot holes that it would make a decent pasta strainer.

Exploring pain in novel ways in film is a good thing. Next time, though, pick a different novel.