Mark Caro

Envy is a shaggy dog-poop story that'll make you wish you could spray something at the screen to make it disappear.

Leans on just as many stereotypes as it tweaks.

Jovovich and Krause are as photogenic and blandly naive as their predecessors, and their ultimate commingling is, if anything, even tamer than in the original. Veteran television-movie director William A. Graham and screenwriter Leslie Stevens have fashioned a 98-minute tropical vacation ad. [02 Aug 1991, p.B]

Now that Smith has gotten these characters and jokes out of his system, here's hoping he can turn to material that doesn't require winking at the audience.

This movie thrusts you so close to these intoxicated idiots that you practically have to wipe off secondhand tequila, sweat and spit stains afterward.

First-time director Rachel Talalay and writer Michael DeLuca provide nothing but clumsily played stock characters who fail to earn the sympathy necessary for a stand-up-and-cheer conclusion. [15 Sept 1991, p.C6]

Just say no.

The upside is that they're likable and play well together...The downside is that they're all still communicating roughly the same message, which lies somewhere between a wink and a nudge.

The movie is never more than the sum of its scattershot jokes; it's sloppily put together, with scenes seemingly cut mid-dialogue.

It's not particularly funny or trenchant, and its portrayal of noxious high school cliques never amounts to more than was shown in "Heathers." [19 Feb 1999]

When a movie is structured around the unveiling of secrets, you ought to care what the answers are. But writer-director Adam Brooks (Almost You), never offers any compelling reason to do so.

This movie is phony, phony, phony -- from its Disneyland version of the Deep South to its pious lessons about the values of simple rural living.

Blast is just shooting blanks. [12 February 1999, Friday, p.A]

The movie also features Doug E. Doug (Cool Runnings) as a bumbler of an FBI agent, a fluffy gray-and-white alley cat as D.C., and a climax overloaded with car crashes, pratfalls and forced mayhem.

Packed with gratuitous dumb moments -- which is too bad, given that the premise has promise.

Recycling the regressive humor of his (Sandler’s) previous films, it piles on so much sentimentality that you wonder how anyone could consider him a renegade. [25 June 1999, Friday, p.A]

The movie drags down everyone involved, regardless of their apparent talent.

Isn't much more creative than your average gross-out comedy.

Resembles an old Nine Inch Nails video. Missing from the mix are any characters with whom you'd want to spend one minute around a campfire.

Kollek's fondness for whimsical plot turns adds still more random elements to a movie that at times seems edited by a blindfolded monkey.

The movie has a big, warm, fuzzy heart - and not a bellylaugh in sight. [30 March 1992, p.5]

In making a movie that preaches love for odd ducks, Schumacher has turned Flawless into the oddest duck of all.

This is one of those would-be blockbusters that wants to have it both ways: It includes enough political commentary to have pretensions of seriousness, yet it's engineered to satisfy the explosion cravings of Schwarzenegger action fans, if any are left.

Stiller, a DodgeBall producer, is revealing an unfortunate craving for the cheese of his childhood.

Put together enough pointless, random details, and you get Gigli, a movie that's less incompetent than bewildering.

Its humor stems precisely from our enjoying its lead character's rotten behavior.

A criminal waste of talent.

Such a low-class, low-laughs rip-off that it makes "There's Something About Mary" resemble a Noel Coward comedy of manners. [23 April 1999, Friday, p.A]

Some actors steal scenes. Tom Green just gives them a bad odor. This self-infatuated goofball is far from the only thing wrong with the clumsy comedy.

Baldwin's Kudrow is a one-dimensional, humorless variation on his corporate tyrant in "Glengarry Glen Ross." When the writers attempt to add color -- like with a female office worker who blathers about caffeine and Bart Simpson -- the results induce cringing. [3 Apr 1998, p.A]

Stumbles from cliche to cliche:

The point of all this nihilism and grotesqueness? You got me. Perhaps Korine thinks he's getting at some harsh truth in showing troubled youngsters running amok without positive adult role models, but that's malarkey. There's a difference between unblinkingly observing reality and wallowing in degeneracy. [6 March 1998]

An overblown clunker full of bad jokes, howling cliches and by-the-numbers action sequences.

Let's make this simple: If you spend money on Soul Plane, you've been played.

In the end you don't believe what you're watching, and you don't care. This party is a drag.

The movie plays like a very expanded version of what would make -- and likely has made -- a cute TV newsmagazine segment.

When the film at last reaches its supposedly shocking conclusion, it resembles an overinflated balloon that has finally burst. It is a film that demands that you pay close attention, then rewards none of your diligence. [12 Apr 1991, p.4]

You watch the movie in a dumbfounded stupor. Why on earth was it made? [26 March 1999, Friday, p.A]

The difference between Head of State and a good comedy is like the difference between Chris Rock and a real actor.

The theory seems to be that if you indiscriminately toss in enough familiar ingredients, you get soup. But Graveyard Shift is more like lumpy water. [29 Oct 1990, p.5C]

What is it about vampires that brings out the worst in filmmakers these days? [16 Aug 1996, p.2]

If Set It Off had concentrated on easy thrills like that well-filmed drive-through-the-walls robbery climax, it might have qualified as pulpy entertainment. Instead, it's that deadliest of beasts: an exploitation movie with pretensions to social significance. [06 Nov 1996, p.1]

Although a literal movie adaptation of Seuss' 1957 classic "The Cat in the Hat" might have run 20 minutes, is it too much to ask that the filmed material preserve the author's sensibility?

Aside from providing a lesson about movies with titles that provide their own bad review, Say It Isn't So gives low humor a bad name.

So excruciatingly awful, the word "dumb" could sue for slander.

Kalifornia is that deadliest of combinations: a pretentious B movie. It repeatedly smacks the viewer in the face and then pretends that it has some intellectual reason for doing so. [03 Sep 1993]

Its jokes aren't funny. Its sloppy direction comes courtesy of Jordan Brady, who made "The Third Wheel," another reportedly failed comedy gathering cobwebs at Miramax.

Lacks the meanness of so many recent gross-out comedies. With the sparkling Diaz leading the way, the lame humor is much more palatable.

But in the end everything comes down to Lawrence, who has yet to develop a truly distinct comedic sensibility.

We've since seen plenty of self-satisfied smart alecks, and Freddy, as written and played, brings nothing new to the party.