Mark Caro

This is "Ghostbusters" meets "Men in Black" meets a whole lot of butt humor.

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.

A lot of fun, with an undeniable energy sparked by two actresses in their 50s working at the peak of their powers. Juicy roles for older women? Let the revolution begin.

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.

The filmmaker's imagination is too rich for Spy Kids 3-D to be written off as a failure. But it's too bad that while the visuals have gained a dimension, the story has lost one.

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.

One may gripe that the tale at times seems familiar, yet that familiarity is also part of the movie's power: Here's a story from halfway around the world that somehow connects with the hearts of viewers of almost any culture.

When a culture offers little more than death upon death, appreciating life's everyday beauty is as good an answer as these characters -- and this filmmaker -- can provide.

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]

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

Neither sinful nor particularly bad, the movie nonetheless diverts us when it should transport us. Its heroes' hearts may lie out at sea, but its soul never leaves dry land.

The Rookie may be pushing buttons, but at least they're the right buttons.

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.

It's as if the movie itself has been sprinkled with fairy dust, and good thing, too: The world of Peter Pan is, at heart, so troublesome that it might as well also be enchanting.

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?

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.

A point is being made about how a criminal creates his own myth, but the ways Read twists and embellishes the truth become progressively less interesting.

It's the simple pleasures that endure, so it would be curmudgeonly not to share Alice's happiness as she innocently sighs, "That Sam is so thoughtful. He promised to slip me a special tube steak."

More intent on engaging the heart as it explores the mysteries contained within - mysteries that, as Lawrence and his spot-on cast demonstrate, are far more compelling than simple murder.

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.

Gripping in purely cinematic terms as an imaginatively told tale of sibling rivalry and the pressures of great expectations.

This is one of those films that can accurately be described as small. Mostly, you just appreciate the time spent with these particular people in this particular place.

Generates genuine tension because it's propelled by actual human feeling, which, these days, turns out to be a surprisingly thrilling prospect. [11 Dec 1998]