Mark Caro

The absurd meets the violent meets the droll, and we just watch from the outside, never having been drawn in by anything resembling believable feelings or behavior.

Striptease has its moments, but by the clunky ending it has gathered more steaminess than steam.

Evans and Kelleher could have used the same premise to tell a different story -- one in which viewers could relate to some of the perks of being First Kid instead of just the inconveniences. Luke could show kids a more exciting world. [30 Aug 1996, p.C]

It's not naughty. It's nice. Naughty is funnier.

Yet the movie's no stinker. Like their video-game counterparts, co-stars Bob Hoskins and John Leguizamo somehow manage to weave their way past threatening obstacles and escape with their dignity.

In Uptown Girls Murphy is like a puppy in traffic; you're confident she'll reach the curb but only because the cars are swerving, not because her moves are so deft.

As Cruel Intentions progresses, you may come to realize that if a bomb suddenly blew up everyone on screen, you wouldn't particularly miss anyone.

Never Been Kissed features a fierce tug of war between the charm of Drew Barrymore and the stupidity of the script.

The movie Gray's Anatomy demonstrates that fully stimulating the senses isn't the same as fully engaging them. Gray still begins talking in his trademark plaid shirt with a notebook and glass of water at his table, but soon Soderbergh is sending him on a Disney ride of scenery changes, lighting effects and moody music. [1 August 1997]

Doesn't really work when examined in the daylight outside the theater doors.

The movie suffers from various technical difficulties - like choppy editing and songs that get cut off mid-groove - and in the end everything collapses in a heap. [05 Nov 1990, p.4C]

You can take the director out of television, but sometimes you can't take television out of the director. Although Garry Marshall has been making movies for longer than he spent creating such series as "The Odd Couple," "Happy Days" and "Laverne and Shirley," his work retains the scent of the small screen.

Looks sleek and moves efficiently, but there's nothing too distinctive under the hood.

You never lose awareness that Fraser and, particularly, Elfman are acting alongside creatures they can't actually see, and you constantly think you should be having more fun than you are. In the end, you want to ask the filmmakers: Is that all, folks?

Superior to 2001's "Lara Croft: Tomb Raider" in almost every way. It's better directed, more consistently acted, and its writing, while at times ridiculous, at least has a modicum of logic at its core. I still had to slap myself to stay awake.

As directed by a button-pushing Herbert Ross, "Undercover Blues" operates under the credo of "Grin, and the world grins with you." The ever-chipper Turner and Quaid try their damndest throughout, with Quaid often resembling a Cheshire cat whose face froze that way. throughout, with Quaid often resembling a Cheshire cat whose face froze that way. But all the pep in the world couldn't save this nonsensical mixture of low-rent espionage, low-ball slapstick and low-reaching cuddly family moments, like the baby's first steps captured in what looks like a Polaroid ad.

Waste in the health care system is deplorable, but waste on the movie screen isn't so great either.

No question, the new movie is amiable family entertainment, and Allen is such an affable actor that maybe kids won't begrudge him seeking romantic fulfillment in order to remain their favorite Santa.

The cinematic equivalent of Trix. It's just made to be enjoyed by certain folks more than others. Will girls like it? More than their parents.

Plays like it was made by people who are 30 going on 13. The movie is as flighty and mixed up as the adolescent girl at its center.

In the end the violence is too realistic (though not terribly graphic) to qualify as cartoony escapism, yet the movie lacks the sophistication, vision or satirical edge to lay claim to any higher purpose. It's merely dark for dark's sake.

Dances in circles until you tire of admiring it.

The movie grows more cloying and repetitive as it stretches well beyond two hours. Almost every main character boasts the same bashful, puppy-dog attitude toward romance.

Jonah may resemble an 83-minute Sunday school lesson, but at least it's a playful, colorful one, with spunky peas and tomatoes, chirpy kids' tune-- and bright animation that may not rival "Monsters, Inc." or "Shrek" but gets its points across.

Falls into a familiar trap, resembling a neatly wrapped made-for-TV homily. [26 February 1999, Friday, p.A]

By throwing so much weight to the love story and increasingly contrived setups, the movie does what you secretly, guiltily hope it will do: It lets you off the hook.

House Party aims for the mainstream and hits it- perhaps too often.

The movie's sole selling point turns out to be its sweetness. Sandler, Segal and writer George Wing obviously like all of the characters despite the constant ribbing, and Sandler and Barrymore are as cuddly as a pair of love-struck walruses. But only a sucker would get too close.

For such a rich visual movie, "Reloaded" tells far more than it shows; the pivotal scenes involve people explaining things to Neo. Too many plot turns resemble detours, and even the ever-amusing Smith feels like a red herring in the scheme of things.

You leave feeling like you've endured a long workout without your pulse ever racing. The exercise ultimately is product placement, with Bond the biggest product of them all.

Plays like a drawn-out outline of a better movie; no one got around to fleshing out the details or providing some soul.

Brightly colored, spiffily designed and easy to sit through in a harmless Disney sort of way, but the comedy never accumulates any momentum.

Even before the witness-protection/trial angle has been conveniently jettisoned, it's clear that the plot is no more than a compulsory ingredient in a previously tested formula. Workmanlike in its execution, reliably predictable throughout, the movie might as well have been called "Another Paycheck."

Lacks the energy and urgency of its source material.

The movie can't quite embrace its characters or their scene; Wahlberg even cracks a joke over the end credits that heralds the late-'80s ascendance of hip-hop, which, of course, spawned Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch.

A professionally made movie, just not an essential one. There's little fresh or provocative here, and if you can't be shaken by this story, why bother?

We've seen Ali as the charismatic star of the real-time drama of his life. "Ali," for all its flashy filmmaking, just doesn't compare.

Manages to leave the impression that it was funny even though most of its jokes don't score.

An oft-told tale.

At 79 minutes, Love and Other Catastrophes is more of a snack than a meal -- one that could use a little less sugar. Now that Croghan has figured out how to bring characters she likes to the screen, her next lesson is to learn how to flesh them out without resorting to emotional shorthand.

Hellboy's adventures may take him to you-know-where and back, but the movie remains in limbo.

The Door in the Floor feels more about a situation than actual people. It's sensitively rendered, filled with those necessary evocative details, and it never rings true.

Mulcahy has toned down the fancy, self-conscious camerawork of the original, which he also directed, and pushes the story forward with enough flash and pop to divert viewers from the shaky premises. [01 Nov 1991, p.F]

cleverly conceived and professionally executed and to hell with that. It's a serial killer movie in the dime-a-dozen era of serial killer movies, with the selling point being that the murderer is played by a movie star. This way you'll like the guy.

Its purpose is simply to allow you to soak up the happy grrrrl-power vibes of this easy-on-the-eyes trio amid unevenly executed computer-enhanced action scenes, at which points the movie resembles a video game.

By all rights, this material should be far more insufferable and less entertaining than it is. [23 Aug 1991, p.H]

It's all pretty dumb, but if you're in the mood for this sort of thing, you won't have a bad time. [9 April 1999, Friday, p.F]

Isn't likely to satisfy the gamers' appetite for action. It also probably isn't heady enough for the science-fiction crowd, and it's too remote for those who simply wish to be immersed in a head-spinning fantasy world.

But writer-director Alan Shapiroisn't content to focus on aquatic mammalian high jinks. Instead, he must pack in virtually every family movie cliche of the '90s. [17 May 1996, p.C]

Meant to be appreciated solely for its gleaming surfaces.

There's something vanilla about the whole enterprise, from the one-size-fits-all spiritualism to Phil Collins' generic world-music songs.

Most definitely a chick flick.

The same bland vision of teendom that's become inescapable on the small and big screens.

Lead actors seeming like they're taking it easy is one thing. But a filmmaker trying to construct a smart romantic comedy actually must do some work.

I didn't believe it, and I don't think the people who made The Family Man did either.

Somehow lacks lightness and weight. This is a movie that tries to work a bloody suicide attempt and a murder into a comedy of manners, with almost everything registering in the same narrow spectrum of inconsequence.

Despite being positioned as a mold-breaker, Riddick now blends in with a sizable crowd of reluctant loner cinematic heroes, just as the movie fails to convince that it's going where no movie has gone before.

Blanks, in a sense, are what M:I-2 is firing. You see the flash, you hear the bang, but the impact never comes.

The main problem is the director-star's choice to play so far beneath his intelligence for so long. Stiller lacks the physical gifts and projected sweetness of, say, Jim Carrey in "Dumb and Dumber," and unlike Peter Sellers in the "Pink Panther" movies, he can't keep a straight face.

It's a clever premise but not one that lends itself to an hour and 42 minutes of high jinks. You get the joke quickly.

This isn't the first time Hughes has targeted kids who like reruns, though he does seem to be working his way back age-wise. He's progressed from his original brat-pack teens to a pesky 10-year-old in "Home Alone" to the 5-year-old here. If his next movie is called "Swee'Pea," you've been warned.

Chan and Wilson's easy camaraderie remains eminently watchable, but the rough edges from last time out are missed.

Some movies run out of gas. This one could use an alternate fuel source.

Sets out to answer all sorts of cosmic questions, though the one most frequently asked is more mundane: Is it better than "Reloaded"? The answer is a matter of degree.

The comedy part of the equation is awfully mild, however. This is a movie that aims for warm smiles rather than belly laughs.

Some stunts and jokes are genuinely clever.

Feels like a demonstration reel for toys, action figures and future DisneyQuest installations.

The Cutting Edge is certainly inoffensive enough, with the exception of a scene in which Doug teaches Kate to loosen up by taking her out to drink shots-a cliche that doesn`t need perpetuating. But if the studio didn`t have enough faith in the movie to release it until well after the Winter Games, the reason probably has something to do with the movie`s lack of faith that an audience can accept anything beyond a 0.5 degree of difficulty.

With the movie's attentions spread so thin, almost everything begins to seem peripheral - even if almost every loose end is tied together, no matter how unlikely the connection.

The joys of singing give the movie a hook, but when Duets aims for lyricism, it's got a tin ear.

Just a vehicle for Carrey to do his hyperactive shtick. He has some entertaining bits, such as his rain-drenched meltdown in which he victimizes some stunned innocents, but he’s working so strenuously that at times he’s hard to watch.

Remains watchable when it's not hitting you like a baseball bat with poignancy. But by the time you've endured all of the shamelessly manipulative plot turns and heart-yanking speeches that close out the movie, all you can do is cry foul.

Why Paltrow, who was accepting a best actress Oscar four years ago, would take this clumsily written role is anyone's guess.

Some of its parts are nifty, but the sum of these parts is nothing.

The good news is that Vaughn is back in needling, loosey-goosey mode in Made, which he produced with Favreau. The bad news is that by the end, not only do you find him quite resistible, but you also may wish one of the tough guys of this mob comedy would heave him out a window.

Zucker gives the movie an ebullient spirit, but he also keeps everything at the same loud pitch throughout.