Mike Clark

Hip-hoppish Honey is in the harmlessly junky "let's put on a show" tradition of "Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo," minus electricity but with a budget for supporting-cast navel rings that 1984's break-dance sequel certainly didn't have.

Is this a comedy, action pic or sensitive Belushi-Harris romance? Director Rod Daniel never establishes a definitive tone, though he comes close in the scene where James Brown's I Feel Good hits the sound track after some canine fornication. You don't need a dog to smell this. [28 Apr 1989, p.4D]

The movie's biggest drawback is a failure to deliver what's promised.

Remarkably, the plot has much in common with "Hellboy II: The Golden Army," yet that bundle of fun has enough vision to make even its Barry Manilow interlude seem appropriate.

On paper, this sounded like a winner. In reality? We have met the Enemy at the multiplex, and he's silly. [08 Feb 1991, p.4D]

It's a mess with sporadic flashes of creativity. Someone should have gone back to the drawing board. [19 July 1996, p.13D]

Kid's tone is off 100% of the time. The young actors are irredeemably bland, and two of the adults (Michael Des Barres' bank president, James LeGros' Storm Trooper-like security guard) are hammy enough to make James Brown seem controlled.

Nothing works in this over-elaborate let's-kidnap-a-kid melodrama. [24 Aug 1990]

With its long takes and a talky script involving an influx of revolving-door eccentrics, Nuts has the feel of a badly filmed play - akin to, say, any 12 of the worst Neil Simon screen adaptations. [21 Dec 1994, p.6D]

Life is a crock -- or something like it.

Desperately conceived by even the most insipid standards of contemporary teen-queen cinema, A Cinderella Story operates under a rotting pumpkin of a supposition.

Brian De Palma's Casualties of War, with a script by playwright David Rabe, is the most overwrought (and likely to be overrated) Vietnam movie since The Deer Hunter. Or maybe since Robert Altman's film of Rabe's Streamers. Or maybe (why split hairs?) ever. [18 Aug 1989, p.4D]

Clumsy urban thriller.

Hopped-up Falling Down is a technically proficient grabber that exploits white-male angst while adeptly juggling two stories filmed in contrasting styles. Slick, maybe facile, and with a nasty streak, it is nonetheless 1993's first consistently engrossing movie. [26 Feb 1993, p.1D]

May be a spectacularly awful movie, but it's also spectacularly drenched in color, décor and other visual oh-la-la.

There's so little action or suspense that this Cell isn't too likely to multiply itself into a sequel.

Mortal Thoughts is a mystery that any halfway-OK hack might turn into a halfway-OK movie by bagging all pretense to art and simply telling a story. But that isn't the style of Alan Rudolph, whose last space shot was Love at Large; the result is a quirky boo-boo I suspect is already halfway out of theaters. [19 Apr 1991, p.2D]

It sounds like fun, but this quasi-continuation of the Nightmare on Elm Street series is a half-hour too long, running 112 minutes when less than 90 would suffice. [14 Oct 1994, p.4D]

Usually, I'm as slow as the pacing of a movie in figuring out who's done it. If you can't solve this mystery with an hour to go (as I did), better call for a transfusion so a better type of blood will start flowing to your brain.

The movie tries to juggle motherly love sentiment with wanna-be snappy ripostes with a violent streak that extends to threatening a grade-schooler with blinding and busted kneecaps. [11 Oct 1996, Pg.03.D]

Neither the actors nor their characters engender much affection.

Coy to a fault, the movie collapses under its own weight with 90 minutes to go, despite Robby Muller's impressive black-and-white photography, which puts the film on a higher artistic plane than other equally unbearable movies. [16 May 1996, Pg.06.D]

A movie that only a father could love -- father being the late John Cassavetes, credited with Lovely's script. [29 Aug 1997]

The movie is what it is, a deadeningly literal look at ozone spiritualists and s-&-m purveyors (possibly one and the same) who toss some very spirited pool parties. A better title than the current marquee anonymity might be Naked Brunch. [16 Sept 1994, p.5D]

Given its complete lack of suspense, eroticism, ensemble acting, and other mere tangibles, Paul Schrader's The Comfort of Strangers (with a Harold Pinter script) is destined to wind up lacking even a modest theatrical run. [29 Mar 1991, p.5D]

Except for a nifty climactic biker attack on the Mississippi statehouse, you've seen the rest. You won't however, see Boz on screen for long. A Stone face, yes - but not a great one. [21 May 1991, p.4D]

The movie runs just 80 minutes, but it's enough time for doldrums to set in when nifty special effects and funny verbal exchanges are out grabbing a smoke. [19 Feb 1993, Life, p.5D]

Thunderheart, which concerns tragic in-fighting between factions of the Oglala Sioux, lands with a sound that duplicates the name of the Indian chief who harassed Howdy Doody in less ethnically sensitive times. Thunderthud. The movie is so dramatically stillborn that it may be unfair to single out Val Kilmer, but that is Kilmer's name atop an acting lineup that includes Sam Shepard, Fred Ward and Graham Greene (Dances With Wolves). [3 Apr 1992, p.8D]