M. E. Russell

There's almost nothing to Battleship beyond its grindingly dull, digitally rendered naval warfare.

Scenes will wander from gross-out gag to sentimental schmaltz to pervy leer to cheap nostalgia within a 30-second span, utterly free of clear directorial guidance. Even worse, very little of it is remotely funny.

It's meant to be funny, but I couldn't help thinking they were figuring out where to plant the pipe bombs.

Although it contains crime and absurdity, it's not thrilling or funny and the title doesn't refer to a gun.

The movie is a septic tank of vapid noir posturing, bad narration, bizarre pacing, cartoonishly hot femme fatales and ineptly staged slapstick.

Scratch the surface, and the movie's underpinnings are an insult to women everywhere -- the film is slick stupid propaganda for the myth of The One True Love that wastes the talents of fine actresses.

It's pathetic.

Unfortunately, the filmmakers failed to replace sex, splatter and cursing with sharp dialogue, characters and plotting.

Is there anything more depressing than when middlebrow filmmakers decide to remake bona fide classics that did not, under any circumstances, need to be remade?

The movie's a fish-out-of-water romantic-comedy thriller that forgets to be romantic, comedic or thrilling.

Once in a great while -- usually late August -- a movie comes along that's so lame, it doesn't deserve a bad review. It deserves a war-crimes tribunal. Ladies and gentlemen, Underclassman is that special film.

A movie of utter inconsequence -- a cinematic Listerine Strip that evaporates from the brain before you even get your popcorn tub to the trash.

In small doses, this looks kind of cool. For two hours, it's excruciating.

Endless and tedious. It's also written-in-crayon, smack-your-face dumb, and edited so that every other shot is a close-up of a flailing limb.

Revenge of the Fallen almost feels like it's signaling an end-game for blockbuster movies: all sensation, no content, catastrophic expense.

Fonda, playing grandmother to this clan of narcissists, is the only one who keeps her dignity. She's funny and low-key and deserves better comeback material than this and "Monster-in-Law." The other two actresses are humiliated.

The all-description storytelling leads to other problems, too, the worst being that "Boleyn" suffers from the same affliction as "The Golden Compass," where you're told about interesting stuff happening elsewhere in another movie you'd much rather be watching.

Might actually be the stupidest movie with good intentions that I've ever seen.

At what point does The Condemned turn from a stupid-fun action movie into something unpleasant and hypocritical?

I could see people enjoying Dan in Real Life, I guess -- the scenery is nice and the people are pretty and the songs are cute little emotion substitutes. But Dan? Buddy? It's not all about you.

You end up with a movie that takes that real problem and makes it feel like an exploitation contrivance.

I can see how Mamma Mia! might be a fun stage musical. As a movie musical, it's a train wreck.

I was stunned to learn that "Beth Cooper" was adapted by former "Simpsons" writer Larry Doyle from his young-adult novel and directed by "Harry Potter" helmer Chris Columbus. Rarely have two seasoned Hollywood professionals produced something so painfully, amateurishly, relentlessly unfunny.

Social justice is never an excuse for bad art. In fact, one could argue that a really bad movie about a really important subject is twice the artistic crime -- because, however well-intentioned, it trivializes human suffering while squandering a teaching opportunity.

Simultaneously boring and cringe-inducing; you can't decide whether to flee the theater or lightly nap.

Spoiler alert: It can leave you feeling kind of empty and sad! It's pretty, icky and boring all at once, and feels like nothing so much as an unusually depressing Ban du Soleil commercial.

Why did they think anyone would want to watch a Fat Albert adaptation that can't answer a simple question: "Who is this movie for?"

Structurally, this is as by-the-numbers as rom-coms get, right down to the wacky best friends, played by Judy Greer and Dan Fogler. For a while, it's low-key enough to be tolerable.