Kevin Thomas

Paul Newman plays a crackerjack demolition man; unfortunately, before even half of this meandering and soggy film is over, Newman, as co-writer, co-producer, director and co-star, has flattened everything in sight, audience included. [29 Nov 1987, p.5]

Unfortunately, for all the admirable respect director Franc Roddam and writer Lloyd Fonvielle (who co-wrote Roddam's "The Lords of Discipline") bring to their extensive reworking of the legend of Frankenstein and his bride, they're over their heads -- waaaaayyy over. The result is a film that commands affection for its ambition and civilized sensibility, but nonetheless provokes unintended laughter. [16 Aug 1985, p.C18]

In comparison to Where the Heart Is, the Wal-Mart commercials seem like cinema verite.

Lee's energy never flags, and She Hate Me resonates with authority and impact and daring, but the messages it sends are mixed.

Few people will be able to go along with Bolton's point of view regarding relationships between adults and underage youths, but there's no denying the writer-director, in his feature debut, has avoided sensationalism in telling this story.

Although not for the faint of heart, it's a potent -- and very tricky -- treat.

The film is no more than a tedious, over-long Bollywood soap opera.

A silly trifle about three housewives (Susan Saint James, Jessica Lange and Jane Curtin) who'd rather plan a shopping mall robbery to ease their dire financial straits than try to get a job. [04 May 1986, p.6]

Has plenty of warmth, affection and conventional wisdom, but too much of the time it plays out in routine fashion with moments of contrivance.

A thick and gooey slice of holiday hokum.

A routine shoot-'em-up, with the triteness of Scott Busby and Martin Copeland's script exceeded only by the flatness of Steve Miner's direction.

An easygoing, earthy comedy that's a good showcase for the robust comic gifts of Cedric the Entertainer.

As for Schneider, he may be obnoxious and unhandsome, but he is, more important, talented and fearless, the driving force of this brash, not-so-predictable comedy.

Haunted Honeymoon is an amusing, bouncy horror comedy that has fun with not only the old-dark-house genre but also those corny but beloved scare shows of the Golden Age of Radio.

A compelling, highly charged film that brings a contemporary perspective to classic prison picture elements.

At once a tender love story and a psychological suspense drama that lays bare the acute tensions that threaten to tear apart an upwardly mobile suburban L.A. Chinese American family.

A likably thoughtful romantic comedy.

There's a spirit of generosity to How High that allows many performers to shine beyond its sharp and amiable stars.

All-out burlesque rather than spoof from the outset, the film becomes less and less amusing. Wayans has a wild zaniness that can be hilarious, but how many bodily function jokes, ultra-crude sexual innuendoes and quite a lot of men and women simply punching each other out can one movie endure?

A warm and pleasant romantic fantasy that shows BenGazzara and Rita Moreno to advantage but is better suited to the tube or the stage.

What follows is graphic, but it's too cerebral and too challenging to be dismissed as pornography.

This handsome film is a splendid, stirring feat of the imagination.

The filmmakers cannot sustain enough momentum to keep their film from seeming contrived and preachy.

A warm, hard-to-resist story.

The one thing that can be said of Waking Up in Reno is that it's rigorously consistent. Every note rings false.

Return to the Blue Lagoon, which was produced and directed by reliable TV veteran William A. Graham, who should know better, might make it with junior high audiences. The Fiji locales are gorgeous and the Basil Pouledouris score unashamedly lush.

It's sensational in both senses of the word: a bravura, provocative sendup of horror pictures that's also scary and gruesome yet too swift-moving to lapse into morbidity.

There's so much ranting and raving, all of it boring and trite.

This picture, which looks far, far better than it is, is so clunky that you can't be sure just how funny writer John Esposito, in adapting an early King short story, and director Ralph S. Singleton intended it to be.

This skillfully made Italian heart-tugger was a success on home ground. Its star, Marco Filiberti, in an audacious writing and directing debut, has lots on his mind and much in his heart, and as a filmmaker displays a Douglas Sirkian flair for finding substance in melodrama.

Ashton Kutcher and Brittany Murphy are attractive and skilled performers as the film's newlyweds, but the movie is so mechanical it's like watching Barbie and Ken dolls going through the motions.

Highlander: The Final Dimension is elementary and vague, but this purportedly last installment works well enough on a comic book level. Music video veteran Andy Morahan, in his feature directorial debut, has the right idea: Go for as much energy, pace and visual panache as possible. [30 Jan 1995, p.F8]

Eating Out might just make it as an amusing trifle, but on the big screen it's merely tedious and silly.

Eventually, Immigration Tango throws away what little credibility it has in going for a finish of total improbability and silliness.

Occasionally heavy-handed and overdone -- and scarcely free from a self-congratulatory tone -- this latest spoof is nonetheless lots of fun, clever and fearless, and loaded with wicked lines and touches.

The humor in this film is so elementary, so numskull, it defies description or extended discussion.

Although Head Over Heels moves swiftly, has an appealing cast and a serviceably diverting plot, it is nevertheless hard to fall head over heels over it.

A provocative, witty -- and admittedly esoteric -- experimental comedy that is serious, amusing and satisfying, in Rosenbush's words: "a Zen riddle designed more to be experienced than understood rationally."

A film that means to be seductive but merely progresses from the contrived to the manipulative.

The slapstick and the sight gags come thick and fast, as they have throughout a hundred years of screen comedy, yet director Dennis Dugan and writers Mark Feldberg and Mitch Klebanoff keep everything light and bouncy.

Gets nowhere. Its star Ice Cube remains characteristically amiable, but this thuddingly miscalculated comedy is way beneath him.

Not everybody will be able to swallow its heady romanticism, yet its French director, Pitof, has brought sophistication to a comic book sensibility, which helps some purple patches of dialogue along with other absurdities.

Although decently acted and well-crafted, Thérèse is essentially an illustrated Sunday school lecture for true believers. It comes across as more an exercise in determined piety.

For his robust and handsome The Musketeer, Hyams enlisted veteran Hong Kong stunt coordinator Xin-Xin Xiong to stage a clutch of spectacular action sequences that are amusing in the imaginative intricacy of their bravura.

Under Alan Cohn's straight-on direction, the film, written by various hands, huffs and puffs mightily just to keep a strenuously labored plot going.

A clever and lively action-adventure with a warm sense of humor and smart dialogue that allows for an affectionate and fleet-footed satire of the classic elements of the Bond franchise.

So much of the film is so funny, inspired and sophisticated, the performances so richly nuanced, that many viewers, Rudolph admirers in particular, will be inclined to forgive a little self-indulgence on the part of this authentic auteur.

Millennium has little to distract you from the obvious phony hair coloring of its stars.

What's so amazing about the Police Academy movies is that they keep being made even though they stopped being funny after the hilarious original. We're now up to No. 4, and the most you can say for it is that it is the teeniest bit better, not quite so crass as the last two...Director Jim Drake is at least brisk and amiable; if nothing else, Police Academy 4 is good-natured and doesn't drag.

The idea is that the guys' adventure proves transformative, but Tucker's dramatic I've-seen-the-light speech is charged with just the right degree of glibness to leave one skeptical.

Lame and overly contrived comedy.

Well-crafted in most aspects, Phantoms is finally more ambitious than satisfying. It also could have used more humor. But it can't be accused of insulting the intelligence of its audiences.

Best of the Best is a by-the-numbers martial-arts movie graced by several celebrated actors marking time between more rewarding assignments and crowned by an appallingly brutal Tae Kwan Do competition. There's nothing here except for karate fanatics. [10 Nov 1989, p.F15]

Can never rise above the melodrama of a past era, despite a splendid, impassioned portrayal by Willem Dafoe and an affecting one by Luo Yan.

A fantasy, a fairy tale, but its characters and the emotions they elicit become painfully real.

Just the ticket for girls in their early teens.

It's a handsome and skillful retelling of a legend that imaginatively draws on conventions of both the western and the gangster movie to create an energetic yet thoughtful contemporary action-adventure.

With a hilarious script and capable cast, the film puts a clever spin on the everyone-is-a-suspect plot.

The result is crass but reasonably harmless, although to hear one of the guys hold forth on how much he's learned about family and loyalty in just one week living with the DOGs is enough to make a person gag.

Flowers in the Attic is a protracted exercise in morbidity, relieved only by moments of ludicrousness. In adapting Andrews' Gothic chiller, writer-director Jeffrey Bloom tries hard to establish an eerie fairy-tale-gone-sour mood, yet fails to work up the credibility necessary to sustain it. The result is a real turnoff. [20 Nov 1987, p.32]

This story of an East L.A. Latina determined to follow in her father's footsteps to the boxing ring does pack a punch.

It's so bad that you have to wonder whether Tom Green was looking for a project to match last year's "Freddy Got Fingered" -- Green didn't direct this turkey, but it surely is a contender for the bottom of the barrel award for 2002.

Smartly directed by Jim Gillespie from a script by various hands, Venom is from Dimension Films and follows its stylish, energetic and darkly amusing horror movie tradition.

It was probably worth every costly cent for Kim Basinger to get out of doing the dreadful Boxing Helena -- but you have to wonder whatever there was about it that persuaded her to do it in the first place. [3 Sept 1993]

Appalling, shamelessly manipulative and contrived, and totally lacking in conviction.

Richard Brooks’ Fever Pitch lives up to its title in capturing the frenzied existence of the compulsive gambler...It also resembles its subject in its hit-and-miss quality: Some scenes pay off, others don’t. But it never lets up, and the result is a film that’s always a pleasure to watch even when it’s defying credibility at every turn or moving so fast it’s hard to keep track of what’s going on.

The picture looks as murky as its story line, the sound is tinny, much of the dialogue is flat or confoundingly technical or merely risible, and most everything on the screen looks patently fake.

It lapses into that familiar category of movies that go in for lots of fancy obfuscation along the way only to make its story seem all the more simple, trite and contrived by the finish.

Just as silly and tedious as the first two unconnected tales of young gay love -- but lots worse.

Has the stuff of a cavalry classic...but it lacks the vision and personality to attain such a level of artistry.

More entrails, more bare bosoms, more R-rated sex, more flatulence, more mayhem, more brutality and more violence. But it adds up to less and less.

Merola unleashes a barrage of information, including much testimony from grateful patients, but he could have made an even more effective film had he paused to summarize each phase in Burzynski's long ordeal.

It is not a terrible movie, and Stallone has appeared in far worse. It's just that, although diverting, it's too routine for its own good.

Wickedly hilarious. [19 Feb 1999]

Sleek...This is one "return" that's surely welcome.

Julien Hernandez's Sex, Politics & Cocktails gives all three a bad name.

The Great Outdoors is about as much fun as ants at a picnic for anyone over the age of 10. It's a crass, blah comedy about summer vacation perils that teams Dan Aykroyd and John Candy, but gives them next to nothing to work with. If the prolific and profit-making John Hughes weren't the writer--as well as the co-executive producer--of this scattershot nonsense directed frenetically by Howard Deutch, it's hard to imagine the film getting made, let alone attracting Aykroyd and Candy.

Director Mike Bigelow maintains a mercifully swift pace, and while the film's humor is deliberately as crass as humanly possible, it is not truly mean-spirited, even though Amsterdam is depicted as a modern-day Sodom and Gomorrah.

So uninvolving it scarcely matters what it looks like.

A tedious comedy... It's not the worst premise for humor dashed with a little wisdom, but the script, written by the film's star Eddie Griffin and others, is less than inspired and tends to blur the line between immaturity and just plain stupidity.

Alba gives such a focused, interior portrayal that she just might have managed to carry the movie had it been better.

Darkness Falls -- with a thud. But it does not go gently into the night, for director Jonathan Liebesman and his large crew cram as much style and energy as they can into a hokey and morbid supernatural thriller plot. It's a downer to see so much effort expended on such junk.

This film's wise and compassionate view is that, for many young women of limited opportunities, winning a beauty contest represents their best hope.

On the whole, this lively, bittersweet Columbia release works well and is sure to connect strongly with fans of Sandler at his most free-wheeling and uninhibited. Scrub off the latrine humor, and underneath there's a heart-tugging sentimental tale of uplift and redemption.

Overlong, overwritten.

A stunner marred by its central figure, a colt named Lucky, having been voiced (by Lukas Haas). Piovani's score is lyrical and emotionally charged, and it goes a long way toward negating the effects of the voice-over narration we're asked to accept.

A standard-issue numskull comedy that aims low but is high in energy.

An elegant Merchant Ivory production, it is too slight and perhaps too precious. But it will be a witty pleasure for admirers of its grande dames: Dianne Wiest, Jane Birkin and Bulle Ogier.

It doesn't seem possible that a film with both the formidable Reno and Waits could be all bad, but The Tiger and the Snow is precisely so.

Neither acutely suspenseful nor particularly thrilling but instead mainly numbing.

As deliberately silly as the film is, it is very knowing and carefully thought out.

It is moving and has been well-crafted with much care.

Despite a premise that's provocative, to say the least, this one's a dud.

Rich in authentic locales but is unevenly directed by Andrew Molina and is hazy in its chronology. Hayata's story in all its myriad implications might well have been better told in documentary form.

Controlled Chaos unfortunately also reveals that Zendel's talents do not equal her ambitions.

Feeble and unfunny.

A fairly silly and ultra-gory schlocker/shocker.

A pleasant diversion, and its makers have been smart enough to keep it unpretentious.

Under Michael Tollin's direction, Prinze does well in what is surely the most complex character he has played on the screen.

A dialogue polishing by Barker, plus his own direction, might have made a crucial difference. What it got instead was a script inescapably convoluted by the need to justify a third sequel...Like the other sequels, Hellraiser: Bloodline goes in for elaborate special effects and decor, but the film is murky and morbid, laden with a heavy dose of grisly sadomasochism that's more repellent than intriguing.

Looks sensational, moves like lightning. But its script (by Joel Soisson) makes no pretense about being logical or even comprehensible.

This heartfelt valentine to the stage leaves no cliché unturned. If it has anything to recommend, it is the loving portrayal of the camaraderie of those who participate in art for art's sake who, to quote Cyrano, "work without one thought of gain or fame."

The actors are game, but their roles lack color and depth, and it's a real struggle to survive Soul Survivors to the finish.

An unpretentious, amusing thrill-a-minute sci-fi horror thriller / monster movie that plugs right into fears of a Y2K crisis.

Marcos Siega's direction is well-paced, but writers David T. Wagner and Brent Goldberg haven't brought anything sufficiently fresh or original to a formula plot to allow Underclassman to rise above the level of a mildly diverting video rental.

Unafraid of improbability and coincidence, writers Ned Kerwin & Scott Duncan pile on nonstop action that keeps up a furious pace without giving the viewer time to ponder its credibility.

Supernova isn't so super.

A smart, stylish horror picture that offers a fresh twist on the ever-reliable revenge theme and affords a raft of talented young actors solid roles that show them to advantage.

The whole question of sex blurring deserves an infinitely better film than “It’s Pat.”

A leaden business from start to finish, and the film's stars, plus Hemsley as Hogan's lively sidekick, David Johansen as the crazed villain of the piece and Mother Love as Pendleton's feisty cook, can't overcome Gottlieb's shortcomings. [11 Oct 1993, p.F3]

Consistently inventive...Comeau comes across likably.

Boat Trip is happily a no-holds-barred, all-out farce in which zany complications escalate rapidly and continually.

Hits hard and pulls no punches in telling its brutal story.

It must be said that, stuck with a script full of plot holes, director David Price doesn't flinch. Both he and his key actors are clearly up to better material than Children of the Corn II: The Final Sacrifice.

Lapses into an exercise in foolishness.

A great-looking picture that zips along with grace, light on its feet but possessed of just enough gravity to allow us to take its people rather than its old TV series premise seriously.

May not offer anything new, but it has terrific vitality.

A dreary tale of supernatural horror.

Relentlessly awful. Not even Terry Kiser’s wandering corpse is funny this time around.

A lackluster international action adventure.

Even as you feel grateful to be able to laugh off this film, you realize that its humor is really only inuring you to a nonstop series of stabbings, slashings, impalings, stranglings and yet other means of killing. Be warned: For all its laughs, Friday the 13th -- A New Beginning (rightly rated R) is just one more nauseating sick joke. [25 March 1985, p.C6]

Raucously energetic and replete with a barrage of graphic sexual humor.

Good-natured but it's a dud.

Some movies should never come to light, either, and Darkness, bearing a 2002 copyright, might well have been better left on the shelf.

There's scarcely a whiff of originality in the zombie horror picture House of the Dead, but Uwe Boll has directed it with enough energy and style that it adds up to passably mindless if grisly fun.

May be too heady for some tastes but can stir you deeply, if you're open to it.

This premise is ripe with possibilities, but in an apparent -- and definitely misguided -- attempt to make his movie more commercial, Wilkinson has made the younger brother a murderer on the run.

It's too bad this Rollerball veered off-track so swiftly, derailed by bad writing and possibly also by some of that extensive post-production reworking.

The result is hopelessly inane, humorless and under-inspired.

Glitter is the week's only major Hollywood release, and it offers considerable escapist entertainment while hitting an affirmative note.

Trite and uninvolving.

The best the makers of Down to You can hope for is that girls in their early teens--clearly the film's target audience--will be so carried away by its charismatic stars that they'll overlook the film's various flaws.

It's been theorized that the popularity of the "Friday the 13th" movies is because the juxtaposing of scenes of lovemaking and extreme violence somehow eases young people's sexual fears. However, this "Friday the 13th", which was written by Daryl Haney and Manuel Fidello and directed by John Carl Buechler, is so dumb and contrived it's hard to imagine it working up any feelings except boredom. [17 May 1988, p.C3]

It's a swift, shrewdly devised youth comedy, a reliable blend of dazzling stunts on the slopes, including mind-boggling somersaults on skis and cornball humor. [15 Jan 1990, p.F9]

A standard issue undergrad gross-out comedy notable only for the showy role it provides Jason Schwartzman, well-remembered as "Rushmore's" geeky high school student Max Fischer.

But even Carvey's protean talent can't dent this ponderously unfunny and uninspired comedy. It's hard to imagine anyone older than 10 being diverted by its broad buffoonery, and kids deserve better than this in the first place.

The only way his (Benigni's) show-off performance could have a prayer of working would be if the film were released as a silent.

Way too bleak to be funny, even as a contemporary satire of the battle of the sexes.

Thanks to a relentlessly terrible script by many hands, it's a dumb movie about dumb cops that should have remained on the shelf, where it's been sitting for over two years. [31 Jan 1994, p.F5]

Since the film is based on the Atari video game of the same name, it also has much to appeal to headbangers: fast pace, lots of gadgets, monsters, explosive special effects, plenty of inscrutable plot twists and turns.

Smartly shot in digital and transferred to 35 mm, suggests that Evans needs more seasoning to make genre conventions and characters work for him rather than against him.

Awkwardly staged and edited and fitted out with an overly intrusive score drawn primarily from classical music, the film consistently subverts the earnest efforts of its cast.

The biggest problem is with the kids themselves, which are played by little people with electrically operated fake heads stuck on top of them. The kids have very little expression, and their voices seem disembodied. As a result, The Garbage Pail Kids Movie seems so much cheap fakery at a time when breathtakingly convincing special effects have become the rule rather than the exception.

There's considerable universality in Black Cloud's plight, yet Schroder makes it personal and deeply felt. In a direct, unpretentious manner, Black Cloud expresses most effectively its hero's struggle with himself.

Lost is consistently clever, amusing -- and scary.

The Conrad Boys reveals little cinematic instinct or imagination but has a deeply personal quality that becomes engaging.

Good-natured and exuberantly politically - socially is more like it - incorrect, but it is woefully under-inspired and amateurish.

Maple Palm cannot possibly be seriously recommended to anyone, but a reviewer, sitting through it until the long-awaited finish, cannot but be moved by how Stewart and everyone else involved has hurled themselves into the project with the utmost conviction, sometimes with unintended comical effect.

A poignant, ambitious romantic comedy that overreaches its premise with a hopelessly convoluted denouement; it plays like a last-minute attempt to pad out Tori Spelling's part to justify her star billing.

For histrionic wretched excess this movie would be hard to surpass.

A handsome, intelligent film of rigorous austerity; unfortunately, for all its seriousness of purpose and fine performances, it's also a boring film about boring people.

Might work on the stage but is merely tedious on the screen.

An undernourished romantic comedy-drama that's especially short on that most essential ingredient: credibility.

An uncommonly satisfying private-eye mystery that is at once classic in form and deeply personal in feeling.

Overly preachy and maudlin but is saved by its obvious sincerity and forthright sense of purpose, and further enhanced by its rich color cinematography.

An adroit, ambitious, richly detailed and keenly observant piece of filmmaking by the director of the haunting Rio drama "Via Appia" (1990).

It's a glum, stale soap opera, tediously paced but mercifully running only 75 minutes, its sole virtue.

Begins on a mildly entertaining note, with each successive vignette the film grows increasingly tedious.

The film does have a certain flair and pace and is lively enough to be mildly diverting.

A sweet-natured Iranian film of considerable charm and humor that might have been more enjoyable had its writer-director-star, Hamid Jebelli, been a tad less self-indulgent in telling his slender tale.

Has a seductive easiness (which may not be for everyone, but it works), a laid-back yet ever-so-slightly portentous score and a wonderful sense of place.

Teen sex comedies don't come more mindless than Joseph A. Pineda's Going Down, a movie so seriously underinspired it's hard to imagine it appealing to anyone but fantasy-prone middle schoolers who can barely wait to live it up like their older brothers and sisters.

The only element that keeps the film from falling apart entirely is powerful physical presence of Pollio, an experienced, impassioned young actor.

The picture is sleek rather than merely slick, moves like lightning and is loaded with nail-biting incidents and dynamic action. What's unfolding for the most part is fun and exciting, but unfortunately it isn't always fully clear.

In short, Vlad could have used a substantial transfusion of wit and energy, with a dash of dark humor.

It is solidly crafted enough from inherently powerful true-life material, however, that WWII buffs and religiously inclined audiences won't be disappointed.

A deeply personal film that is also a mature, assured work rich in telling details and shot through with humor to offset its serious concerns.

Crewson is a game, experienced actress but hasn't sufficient star charisma to lift Suddenly Naked out of the doldrums.

Has much that tries for outrageous camp, but too much of it plays like a crude travesty of overly familiar Southern decadence. It needed a director who knows how to stylize intense theatricality rather than merely revel in it in wobbly fashion.

Far removed from the usual college movies, as amusing as they can sometimes be, and so authentic it's like eavesdropping on life.

With The Rose Technique, producer-writer Ray Stroeber came up with a promising idea, but director Jon Scheide plays this pitch-dark comedy far too straight.

Shot in sepia, "The Fall of Otrar" is as exotic in look and feel as a Sergei Paradjanov fable but a lot more rambunctious and savagely humorous. Unfortunately, it is exceedingly hard to track and not surprisingly assumes the viewer is up to speed on medieval Central Asian history. [03 Feb 2005, p.E20]

Instead of a genre movie-industry calling card, Roy has made a venturesome and effective film.

A lot of uneven acting is also no small detriment to this frequently awkward film's credibility.

A mildly amusing comedy about the vicissitudes of shooting porn that has little of the grit, sleaze and uncertainty that is the lot of the veteran pornographer striving for professionalism more often than not against all odds.

A campy, hopelessly amateurish vanity production.

It is terrible in every aspect -- wretchedly written, directed with a ham fist (by Matthew Levin) and over-acted.

Even though Drool rambles and ultimately slides into overly obvious make-believe, Kissam emerges as a fearless risk-taker of promise.

Director Satyajit Bhatkai has brought plenty of energy to an imaginative and thoughtful script by many hands.

The film is amiably silly, gaudy and even pleasantly diverting for the non-Hindi-speaking viewer who realizes that the verbal gags that elicited laughter in the original language tend to elude translation via English subtitles. The comedy, however, is also heavy on slapstick, pratfalls and crazy disguises.

With a lovely, evocative score composed by Satyajit Ray, Shakespeare Wallah is a tribute to the gallantry, talent and courage of the Kendals. Its gentle humor, however, has a Chekhovian cast.

L’Innocente is the kind of opulent, passionate drama that risks folly to attain the sublime. Giannini and Antonelli are equal to the challenge while O’Neill, who looks ravishing, provides a dispassionate counterpoint.