Michael Wilmington

Taking Care of Business is a curious achievement: a laughless comedy starring Belushi and Grodin, two actors who are almost always funny.

It's Whoopi Goldberg, however, who gives you something extraordinary. At the center of all this formula tongue-in-cheek thriller pablum, she keeps sending out weird curves and bent splinters of off-center energy. She's a remarkably empathic actress, and you only hope she'll get a few vehicles that push her to the limit.

The sum of all snores until the moviemakers start blowing up Baltimore halfway through. Then the special-effects people take over for about 20 breathless minutes.

Somehow The Boy in Blue, amiable enough, always feels like an "afternoon" movie -- a throwaway, not good enough to plan an evening around. [03 May 1986, p.9]

Larger Than Life is far closer to Murray's worst than his best. It's a truly senseless, erratic, if occasionally charming comedy that manages to waste Murray, a fine cast, good location photography and a terrific actor: Tai, the 8,000-pound trained pachyderm whose considerable stuff was strutted in 1995's Operation Dumbo Drop. [03 Nov 1996, p.11C]

The best thing about High Heels are the performances - [Victoria Abril]'s tense, voracious daughter, Parades' star-turn mother, the sinister Bose, the arrogant Atkine - and the lucidity of Almodovar's narrative style, which by now seems as natural as breathing. [20 Dec 1991]

Hobbled with pedestrian direction, a dull visual style and a last act awash in obvious bang-bang melodrama.

The movie, like Hitch, tries to be cool, funny and sweet but falls on its face without generating any real sympathy, smarts or humor.

In the end, even in the howling high frequencies and the nihilistic night, this R-rated movie misses its best shot. It doesn't talk hard enough. [22 Aug 1990, p.5]

It's hard to create snap-crackling languor or laid-back frenzy. And there's also something condescending in the entire conception of Mixed Nuts. [21 Dec 1994, p.7]

The movie doesn't deserve any of the talent bestowed on it, from Reiner's amiable direction to the occasional grace notes in the performances of Hudson, Marceau and David Paymer.

There are misfires in Sucka, but there's also some funny stuff. Wayans shows a refreshing taste for self-mockery. [17 Feb 1989, p.8]

The two halves of Hiding Out--thriller and teen sex comedy--never meld, working against each other rather than together. Hiding Out never escapes its absurd hook, this mechanical collision of genres. After all, if someone really needs to hide out, isn't the best plan to simply . . . hide out?

Boyle's new movie is mostly a zombie fiasco, closer to the vacuities of "The Beach" than the scintillating social satire of "Trainspotting."

A light, breezy, often charming little film, with a good cast playing mostly shallow characters.

The show has its moments-some funny scenes, some wild stop-motion Phil Tippett computer action, some of Torn's scenery-chewing. But they're only moments. RoboCop 3's main problem is that nobody fouled up its program. It's a RoboMovie. [05 Nov 1993, p.C]

Soft and predictable -- which might be OK if there were more laughs and insight.

As a concert film, judged from the music, Sign O' the Times is near the top. As a movie -- carrying inside it the embryo of other movies -- it's not fully satisfying. But you sense it could be; however he stumbles, Prince gives you the impression he'll always, catlike, leap back. [20 Nov 1987, p.4]

Spectacular, fast, never boring. But it's also one of the more disappointing movies I've seen recently.

A bright and zippy, but alarmingly over-campy and lighter-than-fluff cartoon feature.

Freaky Friday commits a lot of sins; luckily, it has Curtis and a few others to cover them up.

For all Ricci's zingers, the actress who gets the most laughs here is Kudrow, who has an amazingly right-on offbeat comic sense and rhythm. Playing a bright, sexually repressed Indiana teacher, she displays priceless timing. [19 June 1998]

The talk and plot twists both have a flavorless, perfunctory quality.

Drably shot, unimaginatively written and shallowly acted, it's a poor example of the "daffy, goofy, sex-crazed guys" occupational comedies that flourished throughout the job-obsessed '80s. [19 Feb 1999]

At bottom, Lethal Weapon isn't much. It's a big, shallow, flashy, buddy-buddy cop thriller; it attacks you like a stereophonic steamroller, flattening everything behind it. Snatches of "Hustle" "Magnum Force" and "48 HRS." float above this plot like scum on a polluted lake, and the holes in logic and mindless climax are (or should be) embarrassing. [6 Mar 1987, p.4]

To say Enemy of the State is senseless is an understatement. This is a movie where logic is the enemy.

Psycho III--better in most respects than II--lets you down with the same swampy thud at the end. It's not a catastrophe. It has some good writing, and some better-than-good acting (Perkins, Diana Scarwid, Jeff Fahey), directing (Perkins again) and camera work (Bruce Surtees). But it fails any sequel's acid test: It feeds off the original without deepening it.

The film now seems less urbane and innovative, more coldly flashy and bluntly affected -- full of sound and Furie, signifying little. [2 June 1987, p.Cal-1]