Lisa Alspector

Intriguing but poorly executed ideas are the basis of this not entirely unappealing romantic comedy.

The shticky dialogue undercuts the solid genre plotting, which undercuts the humor.

Grossly unimaginative.

A blandly twisting plot with no meaningful revelations or substantial themes.

The plot is largely a series of excuses for one-liners expertly delivered by Maguire, making all the hatred, maiming, and killing seem like digressions.

After loosening us up with some irresistible shtick that rigorously fulfills genre expectations, the movie subtly, systematically begins to break down familiar tropes in the depiction of attractiveness, attraction, and heterosexual courtship.

This grasping comedy targets kids of all ages but will please no one as it exploits exhausted ideas about adolescence.

This kind of wheel spinning comes from having the desire to speak but nothing much to say, and Smith, who's made a slight movie about his being a slight filmmaker, seems to know this.

One reason this production-design vehicle is so incredibly boring is that the characters keep having to explain the plot to one another.

The moody images and Michael Nyman's score aren't enough to salvage this banal 1997 science fiction story.

Fast-paced editing doesn't compensate for unconvincing dialogue.

Smug, uninsightful light drama.

Wolfgang Petersen and writer Andrew Marlowe, apparently afraid to really make fun of any American icons, challenge us to take the story straight no matter what, but the only thing this ponderous movie has going for it is its unintentional humor.

This comedy-thriller that has no particular motive for changing tones.

Virtually unendurable.

Isn't absurd enough to be funny.

Makes for a tiresome antidrama populated mainly by unambiguously good characters who might as well be invulnerable.

Boring, irksome family movie.

A story that holds little suspense; we know exactly how happily this animated musical will end--and the wait isn't very diverting.

Its ponderous explanations about why there are vampires in Arizona in the new millennium (blah, blah, blah).

This blunt comedy suffers from poor pacing, colorless dialogue, and subpar performances by the two leads that reveal just how much a director contributes to our perception of what a star is.

The characters seem both reduced and idealized, and the plot has turns a dispassionate dramatist would avoid.

Cathartically disgusting adventure movie.

Tedious mockumentary.

Even the most shocking elements of the story are made bland by childish overkill.

Unlike Michael Jordan, this 45-minute large-format movie demonstrates mostly unrealized potential.

Writer Barry McEvoy and director Barry Levinson might want to brush up on the use of metaphor.

Conveys little sense of a connection, as if di Florio had made it mainly because she had access to a celebrity.

This movie's story must have been computer generated along with its animation.

Ritchie may be skilled at generating controlled chaos, but his surprise-a-minute strategy ultimately holds no surprises; Snatch is even more frenetically boring than his 1999 "Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels."

If misery were inherently interesting, this adaptation starring Emily Watson and Robert Carlyle as a couple plagued by alcoholism and child mortality might be too.

Steve Martin and Goldie Hawn are too good for this embarrassing remake.

Writer Kevin Williamson, who's also responsible for the overrated "Scream," sets cleverness above emotional impact in a poorly conceived 1997 thriller with plenty of empty references.

Even the revelation of what the fifth element is at the end is disingenuous--in fact, the archness of this whole project is repellent.

Trite transformation comedy.

By the time the manic camera slows down to reveal the back stories of the characters, everyone's motives are either moot or redundant.

The most subtly revolting aspect of the movie is how it manages to exploit violence for cheap thrills, in part by equating submission with love.

The end justifies the means as long as everything turns out OK for the not-too-obedient American soldier and everyone else who enjoys Coca-Cola.

This insufferable romance-adventure includes vague comedy as well as unintentional humor, and its target audience seems to be preadolescents who won't notice the calculated enthusiasm with which it sidesteps sexuality.

The story--written by Brian Helgeland and directed by Richard Donner--was just dumb.

The thin story covering her acquisition of one wave after another while narrowly escaping death time and again is strictly for player one.

A kind of idealist fantasy that seems almost hamstrung by its plot.

Too much plot and too much faith in special effects and adolescent humor doom this "Babe" wannabe.

If DiCillo had been going anywhere with this, I'd have gladly followed. But setting up petty ironies and pathetic references to Woody Allen seems to be his only goal.

This ambiguously pitched comedy--its idea of sexy humor is a cheerleader farting--shoots for camp without bothering with satire.

This asthma-inducing adventure set on K2 starts out seeming as if its corny storytelling and phony-looking settings were designed to show that it's as much about genre-movie conventions as anything else.

The insultingly trendy post-postmodern tale rationalizes its own product placement by using overkill.

Would have proved the point if it weren't so mechanically scripted.

The story, which is even dumber than it sounds, is told in flashback.

Misguided attempts at political correctness make this serial-killer movie stupid instead of just dull.

Failed romantic comedy.

With very little modification, this archly innocuous children's musical could have been marketed as a sequel to Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

This terrible live-action comedy based on Jay Ward cartoons has its moments and its near misses.

The premise of this neither dark nor funny movie--which wants to be both--is that it's somehow ironic when wealthy characters are motivated by greed.

The kind of ugly-duckling role that's long been ironic for her (Bullock).

The fundamental problems with David Cronenberg's disastrous 1993 adaptation, written by Hwang himself, are twofold: the unsuitability of such a premise for film, where the actors and audience no longer share the same space, and the miscasting of Jeremy Irons as the accountant and John Lone as the diva.

Wasn't worth Allen's time and isn't worth yours.

Contrasting the erotic with the disgusting is usually provocative and can be funny, but not in this underdog comedy.

This multigenre parody is excruciatingly slow and unamusing; a go-go dancer in the opening and closing credits does as much in a few minutes to shake up our perspective on a bygone aesthetic as the entire narrative in between.

Dead-on imitations of some of the characters from the television series created by Bob Mosher and Joe Connelly will seem pointlessly stylized to viewers unfamiliar with the old sitcom.

This Farrelly brothers "hommage" replicates the mechanics of their work without echoing its spirit or complex tone, and many of the deliberate offenses fail to transcend mere exploitation.

The received notion that kids want their movies fast and furious is barely in evidence in this 1997 comedy, a laboriously slow suburban adventure.

In this inept thriller...the script is a coloring book, and the director's careful to stay within the lines.

In nearly every scene of her dangerously underwritten role, Diaz has a mouthful of cliches.

The writers must have racked their brains for the formula: two parts other movies to one part childhood revenge fantasies

Michael Tolkin and Bruce Joel Rubin's straightforward script and Mimi Leder's toneless direction make this attempt so boring that the titles counting down the months, weeks, and finally hours to impact are best used to gauge how soon the movie will be over.

Two generic ideas amount to nothing in this theatrical dark comedy about violence and information overload.

Wastes most of its 110 minutes making impotent jokes about male sexual behavior and the repugnance of old women.

Slow, arty thriller.

Full of meaningless tragedies left unjustified by the absurdly optimistic ending .. (an) intolerable story.

Adam Sandler displays no virtuosity and stirs no pathos in this special-effects comedy.

The actors' serious faces are out of place in this hopelessly silly action conspiracy.

Writer-director Peter Greenaway never uses narrative lightly...references to the act of filmmaking exhaust their impact pretty quickly.

The story is painfully slow.

Director Bruce Beresford -- not intending to be funny but succeeding wildly.

The elaborate climax set in a Paris bakery is the least boring part of this trained-animal movie.

Nearly toothless 1998 existential drama.

This hopelessly redundant action gross-out aspires to a form of hip vacuousness--and may achieve it.

A promotional tool that establishes its superfluousness simply by existing, this clumsy, smirking movie has a bitter soul.

Ludicrous revenge thriller.

Not particularly sensitive or funny comedy-drama.

As the characters behave with symbolic excess in situations designed to provoke their bigotry and self-interest, superficial black comedy periodically gives way to painful drama.

Ultimately the movie is alluring and respectful--its sadness may be what saves it from becoming sensationalist or trite.

The labored storytelling in this movie about displaced ambition diminishes the impact of the powerful performances.

Overlong, neither funny nor scary movie about a big lizard.

Jamal (Martin Lawrence), starts trying to make the best of a bad situation, which becomes our job too.

Ugly Americans in Paris have run-ins with the native werewolf culture in this horror-for-laughs story, in which the characters' stupidity and the deadpan acting are out of sync--instead of being campy or clever, the plot and performances are just unconvincing.

The message must have got lost somewhere in the plot twists of this would-be topical thriller about the power of hearsay on a college campus.

Viewers have almost two hours to become thoroughly disgusted.

Their splashy gore is more convincing than this incompetent horror-comedy's attempt to mock bourgeois high school dissoluteness without appearing judgmental.

Stylish but insubstantial thriller .

This programmatic male-bonding comedy doesn't even borrow well.

People frequently cover the camera lens with their hands or refer to the "documentary" being filmed, as if to assure us that what we're seeing is real.

The movie occasionally makes an unexpectereference -- though with more desperation than wit.

It’s a heart-tugging scenario undermined by a striking hypocrisy: obscuring a hot-button issue in casting, some actors with Down's syndrome have minor roles, while Penn plays the lead -- and chews the scenery.

More of the abundant sight gags and slips of the tongue originate in bathrooms and bedrooms than are actually set there.

The filmmakers uphold an unfortunate tradition in movies based on TV shows by busily adding superfluous plot elements.

It makes me sick all over again just describing this--the most affecting scene in a sluggish would-be comedy that reflects the dubious state of the art of fat male comedians exploiting themselves in 1997, the year its star died.