Lisa Alspector

The consistency with which the plot turns on characterization instead of contrivance makes this movie better than many of its supposedly grown-up competitors.

Nearly toothless 1998 existential drama.

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

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

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

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

Not unlike "Eyes Wide Shut," this is an eerily earnest contemplation of fidelity, and it's pitched as farce.

Ludicrous revenge thriller.

Unlike the many youth movies that can't overcome their makers' hindsight, this one may actually put you in an adolescent frame of mind.

Not particularly sensitive or funny comedy-drama.

Neither good nor terrible.

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.

Though it isn't so much funny as clever, the parody will hopefully discourage some aspiring teen-movie makers from doing the same old thing.

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.

Beautiful story of doomed love.

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.

Pretty funny caper comedy.

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.

The shtick based on whether other people understand him is subtle enough for 79 minutes.

The filmmakers seem to think they can also manipulate us by combining the erotic with the disgusting. And they can--it's a foolproof tactic.

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 .

The result is an exploitation movie that seems like it's about something -- though what exactly I couldn't say.

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.