Peter Stack

The new comedy is screechingly inane and skitters in nine directions at once.

(Driver) is stuck in a mess of a movie that suffers from awkward writing, a plot with major disconnects in plausibility, an annoyingly screechy kid character and cheesy production values.

An overstuffed, underfed numbskull movie.

It's implausible, cartoonishly overdrawn.

Has an unrelenting staccato quality. Some would say a jackhammer quality.

So inept it's almost entertaining.

Things are generally cute in the film -- and that goes for the stars -- and it all chugs along in some curious bubblegum-chewing sort of way. But the flavor's decidedly flat. [18 May 1991, p.C3]

Rotten, pretentious movie full of minimalist dialogue and self-consciously arty cinematography.

Good for a few laughs but soon turns tiresome, veering incongruously between slapstick antics and mushy sentimentality.

Always is such a lamentable production _ hardly a moment rings true _ that you almost feel like saying ''pardon me'' when you wonder why it apparently didn't occur to Spielberg or anyone else involved that no chemistry was taking place. Not only are the stars rather uninteresting people, they don't seem to like each other in any way that you can feel. [22 Dec. 1989, p.E1]

A mess of a movie, veering constantly toward the laughable when it isn't being offensive. Its only claim to fame is that it's the last movie featuring the late Tupac Shakur.

"Steel" plays like a Saturday morning cartoon -- overdone stunts and hokey chase sequences with the hero on a motorcycle, dodging heavily armed gangsters as well as cops who think he's a bad guy.

Billed as a comedy, it's draped over dreary gags and irritating manic overacting on the part of its co-star, British comic actor Rik Mayall. [24 May 1991, p.E7]

The big trouble with Raising Arizona is that the Coens overdrew their wild and crazy yarn, and overdo almost every gag and gimmick. [20 Mar 1987]

Every instance when Turbo: A Power Rangers Movie feels like the worst movie ever made, some goofy little screechy moment involving the villainess, Divatox, saves it. So it winds up being nearly the worst movie ever made.

A feeble excuse for a movie.

For golden retriever lovers, "Fluke" is a must-see. For everyone else, wait for the video.

Bordello of Blood easily could have been called "Bore- dello of Blood." This gory vampire spoof is remarkably free of jolts, hardly registering as a fright film, with a series of weak special effects involving many globs of guts...The big themes in this lackluster second feature under the "Tales From the Crypt" banner are sex and religion. Both are presented with painfully sophomoric irreverence.

The least they could have done with the sequel Candyman : Farewell to the Flesh is make it scary. How they managed to give us a killer with a bloody hook going around eviscerating people and have him come off as mild as a butterfly is boggling.

The rat problem happens only on the graveyard shift, accounting for the title of Stephen King's all-time worst movie -- and he's got a lot of them. [27 Oct 1990, p.C3]

It's forgettable matinee fodder.

A desperate, pathetic mess.

As pleasantly earnest as Jim Belushi tries to be, and as pert as Linda Hamilton is as his plucky wife, their new movie Mr. Destiny is so contrived, pokey and predictable that it becomes a test of viewer patience. [12 Oct 1990, p.E5]

Only a couple of good gags in its pileup of otherwise lame jokes keep the production from being an unqualified stinker.

Yonkers Joe is incoherent, succeeding neither as an exciting gambling ride nor a touching family story.

A convoluted mess, but there have been worse.

The jump gimmick sounds as if it might make a cute romantic movie. But If Lucy Fell has so little meat that it plays like a television sitcom that somehow grew into a feature-length movie. It's airy, fluffy and ultimately uninteresting.

Highlander: The Final Dimension is no more compelling than the average pile of bricks.