Mark Caro

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.