Mark Caro

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.

This Australian production pairs two always-watchable actors, Guy Pearce and Rachel Griffiths, yet never compels us to feel a thing.

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.

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.

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]

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

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

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.

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.

Stumbles from cliche to cliche:

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

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.

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

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?

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

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

My Father, the Hero isn't just a one-joke movie, but believe it or not, that's by far the best joke. [4 Feb 1994, p.K]

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]

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]

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

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.