Paula Nechak

This sci-fi film noir craves a passionate center, an intoxicating core or some pulse that makes us want to keep taking that first step into dark waters, but it leaves us drowning in its quiet tedium instead.

Is Queen of the Damned worthy of its hype or should it have a stake driven through its dark heart? The answer lies somewhere in between.

A bafflingly unfunny comedy.

Starts slowly, takes a turn for the better for a couple of reels and then, not having much to say or anywhere to go, flatlines into something akin to "American Idol."

Pretty silly stuff, designed to appeal more to older kids and adults than the toddler brigade.

Kilner and crew cough up a mish-mash of contrasting tones and tempos and wind up a rather odd, misshapen curiosity that wavers into too many styles to avoid a slow death by overkill.

It's an unenlightening film that proves youthful anarchy is just as dull as a midlife crisis, and sadly, as predictable, too.

The lapses in logic make a weak subplot about a serial killer on the loose just plain silly instead of provocative.

Assails with its in-your-face, repulsively compelling (like a train wreck) brutality.

Tepid and only sporadically amusing.

So poorly constructed and so elementally banal that it's a shock the script was written by the same guy (Nicholas Kazan) who wrote such taut thrillers as "At Close Range" and "Reversal of Fortune."

A big dud.

Since we never see Thomas, we can't care for him. And he's hardly a sympathetic "hero" in his treatment of women and his insistence that other characters honor his personal boundaries while he ignores theirs.

Tries mightily to have the charm of "Bull Durham," but instead fields raunchy sex jokes, predictable story line, dumb dialogue and a lackluster love affair.

It has absolutely nothing to say -- no redeeming commentary about nihilistic, narcissistic society and its appetite for instant gratification -- which would have made it sociologically interesting, or at least sort of Faustian in theme. Instead Sex and Death 101 is as empty-headed as its protagonist.

A perfect example of form without content.

What it doesn't have is a script that has anything original, cohesive, or, gasp -- funny -- to say.

Though the pop idol recently said that movies are his ultimate goal, the best thing about On the Line is its music.

So badly plotted and written that it rarely makes much sense, even with the elementary story line.

Funny for 15 minutes and then fades into mean-spirited cruelty and stupidity.

While there are maybe two moments of genuinely clever humor, Storytelling is the work of a previously promising filmmaker who, having no new ideas, has morphed into a sniggering schoolboy intent upon being mean.

An awful, misanthropic, deadly unfunny and badly acted war-of-the-sexes travesty.

There's a vicious, crude nerve that snakes through this sequel and it leaves no group unscarred -- but unfortunately, women and the handicapped take most of the thrusts.

An insufferably insipid comedy with a cruel subtext.