Kenneth Turan

Doomed to be inconsequential and forgettable.

Soon becomes a sadistic experience in its own right. Experiencing this pretentious wallow -- overwritten, under-thought and overdone -- is a very sophisticated form of torture.

Not just any kind of trash, it's high-art trash, a kind of "When Tutu Goes Psycho" that so prizes hysteria over sanity that it's worth your life to tell when its characters are hallucinating and when they're not.

This is a surprisingly dull and tedious affair where nothing is even remotely plausible, the romance and the sex least of all.

Coppola decided that he really wasn't making a horror film after all, but rather a love story, a comic burlesque, a costume drama, a piece of erotica, whatever. But no matter what else you do with it, a Dracula that cannot manage to be more scary than silly is as pitilessly doomed as that elegant old Transylvanian himself. [13 Nov 1992]

the first techno-misfire from Walt Disney Pictures, an over-elaborate film that leaves you feeling harangued, harassed and assaulted.

A painfully contrived and artificial exercise in futility.

Jack is more depressing than the weight of its demerits because of the quality of the work both these men have done before.

What audiences end up with word-wise is a hackneyed, completely derivative copy of old Hollywood romances, a movie that reeks of phoniness and lacks even minimal originality.

Yet another silly disaster movie, where the special effects are believable and the characters aren’t.

Writer-director Steers has chosen to overload "Igby" with phony archness and forced black humor, making it not the place to look for satisfying acting.

Chappie is a movie about the evolution of artificial intelligence that's as dumb as a post. It also marks the continuing devolution of the work of director and co-writer Neill Blomkamp.

Aside from preserving these folks for a presumably grateful posterity and convincingly depicting Austin as an open-air lunatic asylum, Slacker does not offer much to anyone who likes to stay awake.

A bad movie for connoisseurs of the genre.

Falling Down encourages a gloating sense that we the long-suffering victims are finally getting our splendid revenge. The ultimate hollowness of that kind of triumph reflects the shallowness of a film all too eager to serve it up. [26 Feb 1993, p.1]

Overall, Charlie Wilson's War is glib rather than witty, one of those films that comes off as being more pleased with itself than it has a right to be. It also suffers from being not all of a piece, with mismatched elements struggling to cohere.

George Clooney's first effort behind the camera was doubtless more stimulating to direct than it will be for audiences to watch.

What's most troubling about this witless mishmash of whiny, infantile philosophizing and bone-crunching violence is the increasing realization that it actually thinks it's saying something of significance.

A paint-by-numbers version of an artist's life, Basquiat is amusing for all the wrong reasons, especially at those horrible moments when you realize you're supposed to be taking it seriously.

The only thing about The Naked Gun that won't make you laugh is the film itself...To mix a metaphor in appropriate style, the filmmakers have really beaten a dead horse into the ground with this one.

Some movies make you sorry you've seen them, and The Cell is one of those. Creepy and horrific, it's a torture chamber film.

Stillborn, pointless piece of work.

So exasperating in its contradictions, so frustrating in its fakery, so deeply irritating in its pretensions, it's frankly hard to know where to begin to dissect it.

This noisy retread, a secondhand facsimile of a movie, is, except for the headache its boisterous sound level leaves you with, as forgettable as a bad day in the Disneyland parking lot.

It would be lying not to say that some of the moviemakers here aren't working at the top of their craft, or that the movie won't reach audiences. On its own terms, Kindergarten Cop is nearly fool-proof: the last word in glib, shallow, soulless, spuriously warm-hearted commercialism. [21 Dec 1990, p.1]

It is hard to say what is more dispiriting about True Romance the movie itself or the fact that someone somewhere is sure to applaud its hollow, dime-store nihilism and smug pseudo-hip posturing as a bright new day in American cinema. [10 Sept 1993]

While adapting accomplished fiction such as this is a lure Hollywood can never resist, some characters breathe better on the page, and that is the case here.

It's a portrayal so unconvincing it makes it close to impossible for the rest of the film to function as intended.

Rising Sun has gotten everything backward. Mystifying when it should be clear and clear when it should be mystifying, it is the murkiest, most unsatisfying of thrillers. And the biggest mystery of all is how a project that appeared to have so much going for it could have gone so determinedly astray.

Though the Strick-Robinson script is solid from line to line, the film's plot is finally too implausible for anyone to rescue.

Though he claims to be a seeker, someone who "has to find out" why believers believe, Maher sets out not after answers but cheap laughs that preach, so to speak, to the converted.

Just because people are objecting to Max for all the wrong reasons doesn't make it a good film, and it's not. It's a bizarre curiosity memorable mainly for the way it fritters away its potentially interesting subject matter via a banal script, unimpressive acting and indifferent direction.

Getting progressively less involving as it goes along, the strongest feeling Series 7 creates is the passionate desire to change the channel and move on.

A weakly comic splatter movie oversupplied with jokey, cartoonish violence.

It's not often that you see talented, well-meaning people joined together like cultists in the snare of a group delusion, but that's what makes this film fascinating, the proverbial accident you can't take your eyes off.

The filmmaking here is so glacially paced (the final script was only 62 pages for a 100-minute film) and enervating that boredom is the most frequent result.

By any rational standard, this film is kind of a mess. Even if you agree with its politics, you will probably weep at the ineptitude of it all.

Affleck and Paltrow, who've been excellent elsewhere, display less chemistry than they've shown in magazine photo shoots. Even Woody and Bo Peep had more going on between them in "Toy Story" than these two manage here.

With some momentary exceptions, Jack the Giant Slayer simply isn't any fun.

Feels more planned than passionate, scary at points but unconvincing overall.

Laurence Fishburne is one actor who has charisma to burn, but even his incendiary performance can't ignite Hoodlum, a would-be gangster epic that generates less heat than a nickel cigar. [27Aug1997 Pg 8]

The Hunt lacks the courage of its presumed convictions, displaying no more than a determination to make as much cash as possible by exploiting national divisions less covetous individuals are despairing of rather than monetizing.

It might even have made a good film, but it hasn't. In the hands of stars in denial about their stardom and a director who can't be bothered to take things seriously, it has come out implausible and unsatisfying, a comic thriller that is not especially funny or thrilling.

A leaden mash-up of western and science-fiction elements that ends up noisy, grotesque and unappealing.

Any movie whose computer-generated effects are more believable than its actors is asking for trouble. A frustrating combination of the magical and the mundane, Dragonheart has less difficulty creating a creditable dragon than a recognizable human being. [31 May 1996, p.F1]

The film's tone works overtime at mythologizing tawdry incidents into some ultimate epic about the lost innocence of youth. Gilded trash is more like it.

Such a tedious Hollywood farce, so unpleasantly glib and relentlessly shallow, that Pacino's excessive performance is not even the worst thing about it.

"Implausible" is a mild word for the shenanigans Gang Related expects us to swallow. Writer-director Jim Kouf has loaded a lifetime's worth of ploys and contrivances, feints and jabs, into this unpleasant, interminable, more-than-usually pointless film. [8 Oct 1997, p.F4]

Not only are none of these characters particularly fun to be with, but the inevitable violence that enters their lives is strong and unpleasant. [03 Sep 1993]

As the Farrellys have proved, tastelessness can be made palatable, but they've misfired with Me, Myself & Irene.

The Quick and the Dead is showy visually, full of pans and zooming close-ups. Rarely dull, it is not noticeably compelling either, and as the derivative offshoot of a derivative genre, it inevitably runs out of energy well before any of its hotshots runs out of bullets.

As pretentious as it is hard-core specific, this fiercely anti-erotic film makes even the chilly "Eyes Wide Shut" play like "The Big Easy."

Not clever or polished enough to be successful as farce, unwilling to supply any reason to care about any of its characters, unable to make the points about the role of fashion in society it thinks it is, "Ready to Wear" is madness without the usual Altman method.

McCarthy has not done himself or his reputation any favors with this original.

Fake or not, I'm Still Here is no fun to watch, and in fact Phoenix's situation comes off as so dire that it becomes a reason to doubt the film's authenticity. Filming someone having a mental breakdown is embarrassing and exploitative at best.

Lacks even a vestige of subtlety and is rarely so much as amusing. Viewers with fond memories of the brothers' wildly funny "There's Something About Mary" will be astonished at how few laughs the current venture has.

Sgt. Bilko is one of those joyless comedies that have lately become so prevalent, a halfheartedly amusing film that avoids originality while relying on old and tired material. [29 Mar 1996, p.F1]

Though it strives to be clever, the only time Nine Months manages to be genuinely witty is in its closing credits, when it displays baby pictures of its stars. It's a small touch but it's not overdone, which is probably why it provides such a contrast with its surroundings. [12 July 1995, p.F1]

Irritating, childish and more frantic than funny, Cats & Dogs does manage some few pleasant moments, but they are not worth waiting for.

A complete waste of time and potential.

Watching Tank Girl is as disorienting as waking up in someone else's bad dream. You want to get out as fast as possible, but all the exits seem to be blocked.

Too glib too often to make much of an impression any way you look at it.

The Basketball Diaries is a lose-lose proposition. Although it masquerades as a cautionary tale about the horrors of heroin, this epic of teen-age * Angst is more accurately seen as a reverential wallow in the gutter of self-absorption.

Mad City is an example of how enervated polemical filmmaking can become when its plot loses contact with plausibility.

A film that is more listless than funny and could surely use some of the energy that animated both Art Buchwald and Paramount Pictures in the lawsuit surrounding authorship of [Eddie Murphy]'s 1988 "Coming to America." [01 Jul 1992]

Redford's Gage is so busy being exquisitely sensitive and polite he neglects to project any energy, and without it the crucial morning-after part of the movie gradually collapses under the weight of its own self-importance. [07 Apr 1993 Pg. F1]

A trying experience. As we watch Rochester fall apart in spectacular fashion, it's clear that a major lure for the venturesome Depp was the chance to play a grotesque, to become a pestilent physical wreck with an artificial silver nose. There's more in that role for the actor, however, than there is for us.

Tiresome, inept farce that's not even a fraction as clever or entertaining as it likes to imagine it is -- a complete waste of time.

Despite that frisson of naughtiness and the occasional smile, Jersey Girl is overall too bland to hold our interest.

Yet for all its ballyhooed candor about sexual matters, it's a surprisingly baffling and opaque film, too artistic to be standard pornography and too zealously focused on being graphic to the exclusion of all else to succeed as drama.

Buried under the miscalculations, the shamelessness, the off-putting and inappropriate broadness are sporadically visible souvenirs of a good project gone bad, hints of the unusual, bittersweet story that got away.

After sitting through M. Butterfly, you'll wonder why they even bothered to try. [01 Oct 1993]

This poor film is so shamelessly manipulative and hopelessly bogus it will make you bite your tongue in regret and despair.

Scattered, phlegmatic and an all-around weak effort, Celebrity turns out instead to be one of Allen's periodic misfires.

If ever a film was made with more money than sense, this is it.

Not the kind of unwatchable mess you might assume a film withheld from reviewers' scrutiny would be. It is, however, something equally unfortunate: a mess you'd rather not be watching.

Haunting almost serves as a reverse image of a successful film, demonstrating by what it lacks exactly what is needed to do things right. [23 July 1999, p.F15]

Larry Crowne is an inside-out movie, acceptable around the edges but hollow and shockingly unconvincing at its core. When that core is two of the biggest movie stars around - Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts - it's an especially dispiriting situation.

A numbing and dispiriting experience aimed at the least discriminating parts of the teen-age audience.

If Penélope Cruz were any less attractive, maybe someone would have noticed how dull this mild, would-be romantic fairy tale has turned out.

Sporadically funny, often strange and almost never poignant.

The most disheartening line in 187 is its last, written in bold type across the screen just before the credits roll: "A teacher wrote this movie." It's enough to make you weep, and not just because it's painful to think that this muddled and manipulative film was penned by someone in a position to mold impressionable minds. [30 Jul 1997, p.F1]

Taking issue with efforts like The Salton Sea, cold and unemotional films that couldn't be more pleased at the opportunity to enthusiastically drag audiences through unhappy material, is as futile as getting mad at the wind.

The latest in what feels like an endless string of movies ... in which the actor's parts have ruinously overdosed on sentimentality and schmaltz at the expense of humor and even sanity.

By the time Duets faces the music, hardly anyone is going to care.

The result is a calculated, cynical piece of business that epitomizes the creative bankruptcy and contempt for the audience that infects so much of the blockbuster side of Hollywood.

It's doubtful that records are kept about this sort of thing, but consider the possibility that Clash of the Titans is the first film to actually be made worse by being in 3-D.

May not be the most tedious superhero movie ever - the competition is admittedly tough - but it is certainly in the running.

The thrill is definitely gone, leaving a disappointing and unpleasant mess in its place.

Forced, heavy-handed and overdone, it's a pretend serious film that offers crass manipulation in the place where honesty is supposed to be.

Such a classic combination of feckless dramaturgy and rampant excess that giving way to giggles is the only sane response.

The Lone Ranger exists without a convincing sense of jeopardy or, more critically, any place for audiences to emotionally connect.

Pedestrian and awkward, this film is a disappointment not only in comparison with Lee's earlier epic, the underrated " Malcolm X," but also in comparison with another film with similar aims, Rachid Bouchareb's "Days of Glory."

The Canyons is a bad accident everyone saw coming, and now it is here.

Sporadically effective, it appears not to have particularly excited the people who made it, and that lackadaisical quality is a drawback.

Given the polyglot nature of the cast, with actors from at least five countries taking their best shots at the English language, it's unclear why Cage felt he needed an accent or, stranger still, why it took him a reported seven months to come up with this one.

How feeble a movie is Stolen Summer? So feeble they've just about buried the title on the film's own poster.

Though the photographs are memorable, the photographer is not.