Lawrence Toppman

You cannot always judge movies by their titles, but you sometimes get good advice. The sequel Jack Reacher: Never Go Back, supplies its own five-word review.

This stale, redundant story goes round in the same tight circles, revealing one piddling new secret and containing one unconvincing change of character.

Jokes don’t pay off at all or take so long to do so that they lose their snap.

If this project is some kind of huge in-joke, I’m willing to admit I didn’t get it. But if I did get it (and I’m afraid I did), it’s a huge disappointment.

No characterization. A plot you could write on a single sheet of toilet paper. Sadistic violence we’re meant to cheer. A surprise that wouldn’t fool anyone who left the theater after the opening credits and came back for the last 10 minutes.

For all the talk about passion, the main feeling Youth conveys is self-pity.

At the center of the film, like a man trying to pull a donkey out of a peat bog, stands Craig: inexpressive, uninflected and obviously tired. Perhaps he’s trying to play a chap who never allows himself access to his emotions, for fear loved ones may be snatched away, but he just looks like an actor who wishes he could quit his job.

Director David Gordon Green steers a clumsy course between crass humor and sudden drama.

Writer Simon Fuchs begins with a reasonable idea – we’re all likely to be curious about the origins of Peter Pan – and does unreasonable things ever after.

I think Baumbach and Gerwig mean Brooke to be a life-affirming free spirit who can’t find a place in our mercenary world. Instead, she comes off as selfish, rude, deluded, irresponsible and mean-spirited.

Plotting has never been writer-director Allen’s strong point, and the story falls apart. It depends on coincidences that are unlikely individually and ridiculous together.

To call the film “unwatchable” is to unfairly insult Josée Deshaies; his lush cinematography delights the eye when the camera roams around Saint Laurent’s workrooms. But “incomprehensible,” “interminable” and “immaterial” all apply.

It’s hard to stay connected to a disaster film where the biggest disaster is the script.

The most frustrating thing about the movie (as with “Cloud Atlas”) is that it could’ve been memorable, had the Wachowskis turned their vision over to more talented storytellers.

The rest of the film couldn’t convince a sixth-grader it might happen. CIA agents search a home for evidence but leave the front door unlocked and unguarded, so Devereaux sneaks in and knocks them out.

Many movies require us to turn off our brains, and many rely on clichés and/or coincidences. It takes a special kind of shamelessness to do both, and Into the Storm has that in spades.

The movie feels not only calculated but tired.

Here’s something I never expected to say, something I doubt I’d have believed if someone else had said it to me: Martin Scorsese can make a three-hour movie without one fresh perspective or compelling character from end to end. The proof, for three agonizing hours, can be found in The Wolf of Wall Street.

What do you get? A reboot of "The Lone Ranger” that metaphorically drags this noble story – and literally drags its title character – through a steaming heap of horse droppings.

It begins as energetic, clichéd nonsense and ends as irritating, clichéd nonsense.

I hope his life was less dull than the movie he's made from it.

The movie that's meant to be his (Apatow) most personal turns out to be his most dully generic.

The worst thing about the picture is that the people involved all seem to realize it's generic.

The film's filled with inconsequential scenes and supporting characters who add useless atmosphere or by-the-book diversity.

The sequel doesn't develop the characters, interject any warmth into its frenetic story or take us anywhere we haven't been.

The Critic's Code of Honor forbids me from explaining in detail why the storytelling is so inept, because I'd have to spoil the silly surprises. So I'll say only this: You can interpret the climax two ways, and both will probably infuriate you.

You can get all of this free on television any week, so why pay for it?

This film might have been daringly funny 10 years ago, even with its broadest elements intact. Now it's comfortable as old slippers and unthreatening as a sleeping kitten.