Richard Roeper

By the halfway mark of the screen-popping and kinetic but ultimately tiresome and borderline dopey AI thriller “Mercy,” I found myself yearning for a wireless mouse so I could log off.

Even though it is quite likely the longest romance in movie history in terms of the time period covered, the one-point premise is stretched washi paper-thin over the course of just 92 minutes.

Clocking in at a slow-jog time of 2 hours and 7 minutes, filled with howlingly bad CGI creations, green-screen scenes that would have looked rudimentary in the early 2000s and clunky dialogue, “Kraven” doesn’t even provide much in the way of camp value. It’s just an undercooked pile of steaming mediocrity.

This isn’t so much a traditional musical drama a la “Wicked” as it is a turgid, heavy-handed and preachy melodrama interspersed with musical numbers that are serviceable but hardly memorable.

If you’re a Chiefs fan, you’ll probably get a kick of out the whole thing.

Alas, the songs are more on the level of Lara Trump than Taylor Swift in this corny romance between Bowyn and Laith Wallschleger’s pro football star.

There’s never a moment when the story lulls. Alas, it’s all just so … preposterous, due to that mistrial of a screenplay.

This is a home run swing that results in a strikeout and a long trudge back to the dugout.

After an initially promising first half-hour, it’s a long and tedious slog to the finish line as we follow a group of paper-thin caricatures who are only mildly interesting and intermittently funny.

The satire becomes almost numbingly obvious over the far too long running time of 140 minutes, and with all due appreciation for the strong work by the leads, the horrifically impressive VFX and prosthetics, and a few moments of pitch-black humor, we exit the film feeling more pummeled than enlightened.

Everything about “Uglies” is average. Not terrible enough to be campy, not deep or provocative or visually impressive enough to merit further chapters in the story.

This is a competently made film with decent cinematography and production design, and the casting is never less than ... interesting, but it favors a simplistic approach and a narrative that verges on adoration.

I’m all for pushing the limits of taste in the name of edgy laughs and portrayals of teen life that don’t sugarcoat the realities of teen life, but while Incoming easily earns its R rating, it has a bit of foul odor about it and features far too many cheap gross-out gags and the inclusion of some genuinely creepy characters whose actions range from the morally questionable to flat-out criminal.

Anything is possible in the world of “The Union.” I mean, anything.

That incredible cast is utterly wasted, with major talents such as Perlman, Jones, Molina, Rhames and Hauser stuck in small supporting roles, playing underwritten, clichéd characters who drift in and out of the movie for a scene or two and then are forgotten.

Trap is a well-crafted shell with nothing inside.

Space Cadet wraps itself in the trappings of a female empowerment story, but it actually celebrates using deception and taking shortcuts. Rex Simpson is no Elle Woods, and this story is more “Illegal, Need Bond” than “Legally Blonde.”

Alas, though Ishana Night Shyamalan demonstrates promise as a filmmaker and delivers some arresting visuals and a few good jump-scares, “The Watchers” feels like a cover band’s take on familiar scary movie themes, with little in the way of original ideas or surprises.

Arriving in theaters nearly three decades after Will Smith and Martin Lawrence proved to be a hilariously likable duo in the original “Bad Boys” and four years after the entertaining, midlife-crisis threequel, the bombastic and cartoonishly over-the-top “Bad Boys: Ride or Die” is one loud misfire.

This is a murky-looking, CGI-heavy dud.

There’s no denying the “John Wick”-type artistry involved in some of the action sequences, but the screenplay invokes far too many gimmicks and eventually takes some wild Act III turns that feel manipulative and borderline ridiculous.

It’s an occasionally interesting, well-acted mess.

The acting, practical and special effects and production design are all superb. The script is repetitive, tedious and a whole lot of ho-hum.

Godzilla x King Kong: The New Empire is the definition of an old-fashioned (with new technology) popcorn movie and there’s certainly no harm in that, but at the end of the day, it feels like the stakes have never been more medium.

Despite a promising beginning, “Immaculate” relies too much on jump-scares and disturbing imagery for the sake of shock, and flies off the rails with an absolutely bonkers climactic sequence that plays like something out of a cheap horror film.

The remake bounces all over the place with a convoluted storyline, a number of superfluous characters and two main villains who are sorely lacking — one because he’s a bland nothing, the other because he's so far over the top it’s like he’s in a Saturday morning cartoon.

Directed by Peter Farrelly from a story/screenplay credited to a total of eight writers (rarely a hopeful sign), “Ricky Stanicky” has the cheerfully offensive and goofy offbeat flavor of 1990s Farrelly Brothers comedies such as “Dumb and Dumber,” “Kingpin” and “There’s Something About Mary,” only with most of the laughs and much of the charm MIA.

Lisa Frankenstein has some surface similarities to films such as “Weird Science” and “Edward Scissorhands,” but the gross-out gags involving Zombie Boy are more disgusting than hilarious and the scares are few and far between. Turns out Lisa Frankenstein’s creation might have been more interesting in her imagination than he is as a walking corpse.