Rita Kempley

A surprisingly tame and humorless effort by director Curtis Hanson of Hitchcock-spoofy The Bedroom Window, the movie does provide a couple of good jolts.

Tomorrow is propelled by relentless action. Chase scenes are interrupted not by witty conversation or sexy conquests but by the rattle of machine gun fire.

Africa might have been another Gone With the Wind, blown by passion and buffeted by social upheaval. But in the end it's like a trip to a game park called Extinction. [20 Dec 1985, p.C1]

A nostalgic paean to China's fading pastoral ways, might easily be taken for an audition tape for Zhang Ziyi.

It's got a little kick to it.

The dazzle doesn't make up, however, for the movie's lack of depth.

As a persona of epic polarities, [Harrison Ford] animates this muddled, metaphysical journey into the jungle.

The charismatic comedienne pulls the slipshod spy adventure Jumpin' Jack Flash out of the fire. [10 Oct 1986, p.N29]

Three losers of late, the actors succeed quite nicely in unifying the movie's multiple personalities, its ricocheting screenplay.

Though it lacks the gloss, twists and star power of earlier Grisham movies, The Chamber does possess Gene Hackman's most cantankerous turn since the lowdown lawman he created in "Unforgiven."

The movie faithfully records the rivalries among the various members of a fractious Baltimore family, but it never really attempts to resolve any of the internecine conflicts. In that sense, it's less ambitious than many a TV series.

Excess of vision and a weak underpinning are the potholes in the Streets of Fire. If you can swerve around them, Happy trails to you. [01 June 1984, p.25]

As long as the script tracks the men's relationship with the baby, the picture is lively froth. But when screen writers James Orr and Jim Cruickshank of Tough Guys stray, the story goes stale.

A sexless seriocomedy that would be a bust without the support of Burt Reynolds and Ving Rhames. The pair bring a much-needed lift to this tale of a mother at the mercy of the system. Without them, the movie is mostly a showcase for the star's personal trainer.

Alternately a celebration and sendup of cowboy conventions, the movie lingers over a stunning Western landscape only to be spurred on by the principals' inexhaustible supply of escapades. The burr under the saddle: There's just too much of everything.

Director John Milius, the barbarian behind Conan, co-wrote this anti-gun-control, anti- Communist, survivalist script with Kevin Reynolds. Sick and silly as it is, the idea could have been intriguing, had it gone anywhere, which it didn't.

Despite all the talent, form triumphs over substance. Director Hugh (Chariots of Fire) Hudson clutches, and climactic scenes miss their mark. Greystoke is curious entertainment, less satisfying than Planet of the Apes, which begs the same question: noble savage or naked ape? [30 Mar 1984, p.21]

The blarney and bohunkery builds to a shaky apex of nothingness, then ends with a slaughter in slo-motion, a romantic ode of blood, bullets and body parts.

Unhappily, the attractive twosome never give into the pull, just as this coquettish variant of "Planes, Trains and Automobiles" never arrives at its promised destination.

Sinbad, one of show business's sunniest souls, brings much-needed buoyancy to this somewhat soggy tale of kindred spirits. [30 Aug 1996, p.F06]

Everything has been modernized except for the characters, and that's this movie's tragic flaw.

Ultimately Sleeping With the Enemy wants to be about one woman's rebirth, but Roberts neither grows nor glows in this empty movie.

Of course, this is the stuff of suspense thrillers, but writer-director Steve DeJarnatt sets an unsure pace that tries our patience. It seems he's not committed to his story or his characters, but to the idea that he is saying something profound -- which he isn't.

Built with fine materials and boasts a gorgeous ocean view. Unfortunately the family dramedy's design is overblown and the construction is pretty flimsy.

A star vehicle from its onset, this peculiar, mediocre comedy strains to accommodate the talents of both Mutt and Jeff, Terminator and troll. It's a Frankensteinian thing, an unsettling combination of two-fisted beefcake and mean-spirited shtick.

The only thing parents need fear is utter boredom.

Takes its cues from the musical dramas of the '70s, but this otherwise engaging young-adult romance never quite catches Saturday night fever.

Potter-philes are sure to get what they want -- if what they want is, in fact, an exacting version of J.K. Rowling's charming children's fantasy. If it's enchantment they are after, that's quite another matter.

An agoraphobic's nightmare, it's a condescending view, and maybe one that's totally off base. [23 Sep 1983, p.21]

There's style and humor, but the visual excess overwhelms the weak plot. [29 Apr 1983, p.17]

Lorenzo's Oil, which is further encumbered by its funereal pacing and woebegone score, is definitely a remarkable story, but as told by Miller it isn't really an uplifting one.

But this unsavory stew is just plain overcooked.

For the most part, American movies concern the middle class, console the poor and celebrate the rich, and Schrader tried to pay blue-collar culture its due. He may have worked an honest day, but he didn't come up with an honest drama.

A grating and sinister comedy on the dangers of television. This mean-spirited marriage of cautionary tale and thriller-satire follows the increasingly vicious antics of a deranged cable installer who stalks a preferred customer.

Based on Gerry Conlon's own account of his arrest and subsequent incarceration, the film takes forever to do what "60 Minutes" does with the same meat in a single segment.

Dick Tracy is an ambitiously vainglorious effort, expensive, beautifully appointed, but at its core empty as a spent bullet. It asks us to read these comics without a grain of salt or a pinch of irony.

The great Cornish king becomes merely a corny one as the tale devolves into a compromise between the principles of Camelot and of Hollywood.

Steven Brill, who has a small role in the film, constructed the screenplay much as one would put together some of those particleboard bookcases from Ikea.

A roundup of tired cliches and tired acting -- except for Sutherland and Petersen -- Young Guns II is dull as beans and lazy as tumbleweed.

You'd think indie filmmakers would have learned by now that people tend to put on a sober face when addressed from the pulpit.

Predictable, slightly painful and as embarrassing as all get-out.

Betsy's Wedding is white cake and warm bubbly, not an unsuitable marriage, just a tepid one.

Raw Deal is not as reactionary as Cobra but it's just as violent, maybe even bloodier, with its graphic gun fights and bullet-spattered, shattered bodies blasted before our eyes. Still it's also a quality project -- the look and sound of the film are first rate.

A sporadically amusing romp modeled on "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels."

Both director and co-writer of Rascals redux, Spheeris coaxes artless performances from the picture's engaging ensemble of half-pint players.

Though Mother has already collected two prizes for its screenplay, it's really rather thin. If it weren't so slow and repetitious, there'd only be enough whining and grousing for a Seinfeld episode. [10 Jan 1997, p.D01]

Belushi is fetching, though he plays a cliche'. But the movie would roll over and play dead without the talented German shepherd. Lassie was classy and Benji beguiling, but Jerry Lee is a four-legged Burt Reynolds, just made for fast cars and chase scenes.

Screenwriter David Veloz makes his debut behind the camera with this stale and stodgily paced depiction of Stahl's highs and lows. The story, which Veloz also wrote, unfolds via a series of momentum-draining flashbacks. [18 Sep 1998, p.C07]

An implausible action adventure with the most geriatric payload since a community of retirees lifted off in "Cocoon."

A heady blend of beefcake, derring-do and jingoism, their adventure is not merely action-packed, but well-built to boot.

A trashy Japanese production with special guest Raymond Burr. [27 Sep 1985, p.25]

Those who do go with the fantasy are probably hopeless romantics.

Riddled with labor rhetoric, this coal-dusted tragedy wavers between well-acted propaganda and historical burlesque. Rambo's reactionism seems almost subtle by contrast.

It's like Rambo's "First Blood," with an action hero in dog tags who doesn't talk much.

A bittersweet duet convincingly, if unexcitingly, performed by Baye and Lopez.

True Colors rushes by at a hectic pace, never allowing the story to gain momentum. Despite good performances from the two leads, the film has the feel of a cautionary stampede. While it aspires to lofty heights, it never really goes much beyond the rules of behavior prescribed by the Boy Scout Handbook.

This classic comedy of errors is over-structured by cousin-writers Dori Pierson and Marc Rubel and mechanically laid out by director Jim Abrahams.

We see the atmospherics, and hear them, but never feel the heat. Director Philip ("The Grey Fox") Borsos' style is too dogged to transform Mean Season into a true thriller, though it serves well as a message movie on what news is fit to print. [15 Feb 1985, p.29]

The mediocre screenplay (by Tom S. Parker and Jim Jennewein of The Flintstones) is a more sober version of Arthur, with elements from Our Gang, North by Northwest and TV's Gilligan's Island. The filmmakers seem to think of their movie as a fiduciary fable, but they're not quite sure about its moral.

It's a monumental biopic that cheapens the hero's successes by glossing over the failures that surely also shaped the man.

Chechik has crafted Benny & Joon not as a seamless whole but as a tumble of scenes. Unfortunately, too many of them are inspired by Charlie Chaplin, Harold Lloyd or Buster Keaton, and they seem to spill from the screen like Bozos from a kiddie car.

A spotty documentary of the Rolling Stones 1981 concert tour. [11 Feb 1983, p.23]

Chock-full of celeb cameos, puns and contemporary camp, the movie is annoyingly hip. It wants to belong even more desperately than its title character, who yearns to be a god almost as much as Pinocchio wanted to be just plain human. Hercules, alas, is hardly in the same class with the emotionally compelling Pinocchio -- although on many occasions its hulking hero seems just as wooden.

Directing with an eye to "Rebecca," Branagh brings more mood than suspense to this apparent hommage to Hitchcock. Still, he raises no goose bumps.

The movie updates Disney's blueprint without altering it in any meaningful way.

Gattaca may be all done up in new-fangled notions, but underneath all the guff about designer babies, it rests on a notion that was a staple of the original "Star Trek" series.

The relationships feel contrived, less a drama than an exercise in cuteness.

Everyone is convincingly miserable, and audiences are likely to follow suit.

Like the jokes, the brothers' rapport seems recycled from childhood. Sheen and Estevez are hardly working.

If the movie stands between good old messy, toxic America and depraved Gilead, blessed be it. But alas, it's unlikely to appeal to the converted, much less bona fide brimstone eaters. And one can't help but wonder why a woman didn't direct this movie about women being dominated by men.

Awkwardly acted.

This anti-feminist parable is both a labor and a pain.

The moviemakers have set out to interpret the inner workings of abusive relationships in their boundless variety. Alas, their ambitions are far grander than their abilities.

Pretty Pouters Kim Basinger and Richard Gere spit and spat and inevitably jump each other's bones in No Mercy, a standard-issue cop thriller that amounts to "Beverly Hills Cop" in a bad mood. It's the old you-killed-my-partner, now-it's-your-turn-dog-breath scenario, warmed over.

With his teddy bear appeal, it's not surprising that there was more magnetism between Selleck and the Baby in "Three Men" than there is between Selleck and grown-up babe Paulina Porizkova (though the two femmes fatales are similarly gifted). And it doesn't help that this high-paid clotheshorse is a chilly beauty whose presence is as spare as her figure. It's hard for Selleck to look deeply into those far-focused mannequin eyes.

Nicely acted, wonderfully scenic but emotionally vapid.

Meet Joe Black, with Brad Pitt, is a near-death experience: Time seems to stop as we stiffen in our seats and the actors all whisper as if they're at a wake.

With its fancifully moldering sets and technical effects, Highlander 2 is little more than a barbarous arena, a Conanistic return to paganism for those among us who still laugh at violence.

Defiantly sophomoric, often hilarious and crude as all get-out.

Private Parts, lifted from Stern's best-selling autobiography, is a choppy amalgam of "Revenge of the Nerds," "Father Knows Best" and "Network."

Essentially, this is a film about humans as victims of alien abuse, a mediocre look at helplessness.

The movie's a mixed bag, probably because the script was written by drug-traffic expert Oliver Stone of "Scarface" and "Midnight Express" and David Lee Henry of "The Evil Men Do" on the one hand, and directed by sensitive guy Hal Ashby of "Harold and Maude" and "Coming Home" on the other. It's an unhappy hybrid, a valiant but impractical attempt to upgrade the genre. [25 Apr 1986, p.27]

The Shadow does have its moments, which include a googly-eyed mad scientist portrayed by Tim Curry, a smoking billboard for Llama cigarettes and an animated dagger capable of biting he who wields it. Of course, they too are crushed under the weight of this overproduced but underwhelming monolith.

An uneven look at the reclamation of a former child star, "Life With Mikey" has the strangely amiable feel of a cult movie for the peanut gallery. It's camp and cutesy all at the same time, like a kiddie-car ride down "Sunset Boulevard" with an aging Gary Coleman behind the wheel. Caught somewhere between a spoof and a celebration of child-powered sitcoms, it only hints at the real toll of being a has-been teen.

A sloppily structured, snoozily paced psychodrama about living in harmony with nature and all the rest of that tree-hugging hooey.

Deceptively labeled a domestic epic by writer-director James Cameron, the $100 million movie is, in fact, a weird hybrid of action juggernaut, buddy cop caper and reactionary soft-core pornography.

It has more complex stunts, more technical perfection, and more than a touch of genius. It's fun at both ends. But it's also mean-spirited and corrupt at its core.

A sometimes inspired but sputtering parody of the fashion industry. It's desperate to please, yet never unzips the fancy pants of haute couture.

The film would be utterly banal without the novelty of the high-toned Streep in an action role.

An absorbing but awkward union of the two-fisted boxing movie with the moist-eyed British memoir...Though rife with worthy intentions and great notions, this populist safari manages to be both patronizing and manipulative.

John Schlesinger, who also directed Midnight Cowboy and The Marathon Man, tries to combine the best of both earlier films by marrying male bonding and spy thrills. But his work is uninspired here, sheepish, and loaded down with obtrusive, overworked symbolism. [25 Jan 1985, p.21]

52 PICK-UP is "Death Wish" for yuppies...But all the slime and grime can't camouflage the sameness of this standard, divide-and-conquer story.

Mike Werb's screenplay -- just a rickety framework for Carrey's consummate clowning -- lacks a propelling plot and has zip in terms of secondary character development.

Great Balls of Fire, like "La Bamba," is thin on the meaning of the life in question, but big on '50s Billboard nostalgia. It's lightweight archaeology, a bent American Bandstand biography. Something has slipped away from McBride, Quaid and Fields: the truth, the heart, the soul. All that's left is the hip.

It claims to offer a new formula for comedy, but a lot of filmgoers will probably prefer the classic kind. [30 Aug 1985, p.N23]

An uneventful actors' exercise better suited to off-off-Broadway theater.

But to tell the truth, the Grenada Incursion looks even sillier on film than it did in the headlines.

As it is, fans of Candy are expecting a John Candy movie -- that is, a reasonably hilarious comedy about a sweetly sympathetic bumbler. And while he is as cumbersomely lovable as a Saint Bernard puppy, he's rarely allowed to be funny here. He seems miserably uncomfortable as a romantic lead, or maybe it's just that he's playing opposite the Stepford Actress.

Uncle Buck is competent comedy, a bit simplistic, a bit stale, no gremlins, no gushiness, no surprises. A Hughes movie offers the kind of reliability you expect from major household appliances or a good set of radials.

Many of the scenes, already badly written, fail to fulfill their screwball potential. Real Genius should be applauded as a higher class of passage movie. But despite its enthusiastic young cast and its many good intentions, it doesn't quite succeed. I guess there's a leak in the think tank. [9 Aug 1985, p.19]

Eberhardt's hand isn't sure and Night of the Comet wobbles in its orbit. [16 Nov 1984, p.21]

Shaft? Not in this splashy-but-empty remake he isn't.

Ernest Goes to Jail is directed by John Cherry, the adman who created the character. And hard as it is to admit it, Cherry is getting better -- better at making endearing an annoying pea-brained pitchman.

Murray and director John Byrum, who cowrote the screenplay, saved the dramatic tension for last and least. Till then, the villain is Life. And that doesn't cut it when you're talking epic saga. [19 Oct 1984, p.21]

The possibilities are intriguing, but more might have been realized. [17 Aug 1984, p.23]

Doesn't pack the punch of Schrader and Scorsese's career-best collaborations ("Raging Bull," "Taxi Driver").

It is a middling gun play that asks and answers the persistent question: Whither testosterone?

Gibson and the overexposed Hunt don't exactly burn up the screen, not that it much matters. The charm isn't in the relationship, it's in Gibson's puckish appeal.

Rookie of the Year is a wholly benevolent but banal baseball fantasy aimed at Little Leaguers with dreams of reaching big-time fields.

Fans of Gere and Roberts may not care about the movie's many implausibilities and other shortcomings because the stars do indeed sparkle like the bubbles in wedding champagne. But the rest of us will find the vintage too sweet.

A coy seriocomedy distantly related to--but missing the sting of--"Kiss of the Spider Woman."

Visually bland, well-meaning salute to the brotherhood of man.

Don't blame the fellas. They're good when they're together, but that doesn't happen nearly often enough in this sporadically amusing script. [07 Dec 1984, p.39]

Reinhold, as a little boy in a big man's body, looks and acts more like a sheep in shell shock. Savage, however, is an able comic when he takes on his father's yuppie persona, demanding Grey Poupon at the school cafeteria and downing martinis after a hard day in the principal's office.

Wendy Wasserstein brings a dull pen to this literary adaptation, which shows none of the bite or savvy of Stephen McCauley's novel.

The Theory of Flight, an unlikely marriage of malady movie and romantic comedy, never quite soars, but beats its wings with the desperate tenacity of a wounded butterfly. Alas, the proportion of lift to drag isn't quite enough to defy the gravity of its subject.

It's wage earners versus employers, his same old pitch. No curveballs, no spitballs, no surprises.

The fourth film in the series, the newest installment has a new director, Chris Cain, and a female Kid, Hilary Swank, but otherwise it reprises the formula established by John G. Avildsen in 1984: A troubled teen conquers self-doubt and the local bullies with the help of an enigmatic karate teacher.

This is Disney's idea of a fright fest -- about as threatening as Jaws with Flipper in the title role.

Director John Schlesinger bolsters the rickety script with cameras that spin like Linda Blair's head. If you don't get spooked, you'll at least get dizzy.

Howard entices us into overlooking the film's faults with some genuinely amusing scenes, particularly those featuring Japanese-American Gedde Watanabe as a beleaguered Assan executive who doesn't fit the corporate mold. [14 Mar 1986, p.27]

Flexploitation pure and simple -- nothing but savagery, sex and sinew.

A corkscrew of a thriller, has more twists than a tarantula with a permanent.

Linklater, who introduced the blithe, but bemused slacker subculture to America in 1991, gets bogged down not only in Bogosian's for-stage structure, but especially his middle-aged perspective.

Brooks unfortunately is neither Brooks nor Benny, but a hesitant ghost of both. And Bancroft is no comedienne, just tired old Mrs. Robinson with a feather boa.

There are entertaining touches in this blackly comic grotesquerie, but it is no more frightening than a teenage slasher movie. Perkins, in his first stab at directing, never gives us time to anticipate. At best, he parodies the classic, but without restraint. [04 July 1986, p.N29]

Rusnak, who was the second-unit director of "Godzilla," brings plenty of style to this ambitious yet utterly anticlimactic thumb-sucker.

Writer-director Neil Jordan shows no knack for comedy, nor is he as kinky as he was on Mona Lisa, and kinky is what is called for.

The topic certainly suits the times, but the director's approach is as alienating as it is old-fashioned.

Toys is a misguided missive from director Barry Levinson about an attempted military coup at a whimsically run toy factory.

Though he is a master thief with a heart of gold, the new Templar has all the charm of one of those ladies behind the counter at the Department of Motor Vehicles.

It is unsparing when it comes to gruesome descriptions and ominous characters, but it's got more giggles than goose bumps. The Exorcist III isn't about to scare anybody.

Director Ron Underwood, who came up with a happy marriage of schmaltz and shtick in "City Slickers," can't quite disguise the mechanical superficiality of the story.

To Greenwalt's credit as cowriter, there are funny lines and some situations that held promise. But his direction is early "Brady Bunch," with a daub of Ridley Scott's Chanel commercials for further inspiration...Despite the director, the cast is decent, with Fred Ward of the "Right Stuff" in rare comic form as Lt. Lou Fimple, a vice cop who finds both his wife and his daughter undone on lover's lane.

Languidly paced and prettily crafted, it's certainly a scenic adaptation of Golding's novel. But while it's been brought up to date, there's certainly nothing new under this tropical sun. [16 Mar 1990, p.B7]

Oscar and Lucinda seems like the perfect story for director Gillian Armstrong, that of a free-spirited proto-feminist chafing at the strictures of tight-laced colonial Australia. But in the end, she's created a beautiful but annoying Victorian-era melodrama. [30Jan1998 Pg.D.06]

Gibson, the thinking man's Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Spacek, a rawboned Raggedy Ann, are nearly silent partners in this largely visual parable. Despite their good looks and best efforts, the film falters. [11 Jan 1985, p.19]

A queasy union of savagery and uplift, the film ought to be unnerving. Instead, it finally becomes routine. [18Apr1997 Pg. C.07]

Cryer, a talented comedic actor, struggles mightily but can't wring laughs from the lowbrow humor. The screenplay, written by Jeff Rothberg and Joe Menosky, is statically directed by Bob Giraldi, a maker of Michael Jackson videos and Pepsi-Cola ads, in his faint feature debut.

Lacking in both inspiration and ingenuity, it doesn't so much spoof the conventions of the genre as dumb down famous -- and in some cases, forgotten -- scenes from a slew of other movies.

Gratuitous gore prevents this monstrous movie from becoming the competent comedy it might have been. [21 Aug 1981, p.17]

How many times can we be awestruck by Day-Glo Gumbies? And why do these creatures always travel with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir?

Crudely made and in your face, The Living End is mostly annoying.

Baldly manipulative, emotionally counterfeit melodrama.

The film fleetingly touches on the underfunding of schools and other administrative problems as well as the more compelling personal issues of teen pregnancy and violence. But the characters are so poorly drawn and underdeveloped that they seem to be little more than personifications of these societal ills.

The trouble is, we don't really much care about this philandering billionaire glamour puss, who seems perfectly capable of taking care of herself. We don't care about her husband or lover either.

Bad movies have a way of writing their own epitaphs.

It's deeply vapid, with the emotional consistency of styling mousse.

Tired conventions, hoary themes and obvious conclusions.

The author of such shoot-'em-ups as "Executioner" and "Road House," Henkin has hard-boiled the action genre twice over with this lurid, ludicrous, appallingly violent, offhandedly moralistic spoof.

Tea With Mussolini is really about the first women in the Italian director's life. It's drawn from a single chapter of his book but suffers from a lack of focus. None of these great ladies is willing to give up center stage; nor, for that matter, are the grande dames who bring them so vividly to life.

It's all as cliche'd as "A Summer Place," a better movie even if it was soap opera. For Keeps is a soapbox opera, and the slats are about to fall through. Writers Tim Kazurinsky and Denise DeClue are as wishy-washy about their issues as they are their heroes. And they serve up the usual "you can have it all" scenario. After the teen-agers suffer with didies and postpartum depression, it's off to college to prepare for future careers. [16 Jan 1988, p.B5]

The point is well taken, but, basically, Cradle is a long rapturous interlude of baby pictures, now and then reinforced with pointed pro-momma dialogue. Even with the politics, it remains just so much French Pablum. [09 May 1986, p.28]

Hardware doesn't make a movie; characters, be they Blawp or human, do. And as so often happens with such outsize undertakings, they are overwhelmed by the gizmos. Technology, one. Astros, naught.

The region's stark beauty and the filmmaker's eye for composition compensate somewhat for its predictability and obvious if misguided feminist agenda.

A mite sluggish.

City Slickers II, subtitled The Legend of Curly's Gold, is basically a refresher course. There are couple of good guffaws, but many of the jokes are simply recycled from the prequel.

A low-horsepower chase movie with Charlie Sheen and D.B. Sweeney...Peter Werner, with plenty of documentaries and "Moonlighting" episodes to his credit, directs this out-of-gas look at the young and the mobile. What this movie needs is more macho, more moxie, more attitude. Fill it up, and make it high testosterone.

It's certainly harrowing to sit through. Talk about your grizzly misadventures.

A John Hughes movie without Pretty in Pink director John Hughes, sure makes you appreciate the teens' auteur. Frankly, Steve Rash, who directs this copycat comedy, another nerd-gets-the-cheerleader romance, isn't fit to wear Hughes' hightops. Rash only tinkers with adolescent angst, without the progenitor's empathy for his audience.

The remake, alas, must mask its failings with Julia Ormond's toothsomeness, Pollack's poky pacing and the uninspired scribblings of writers Barbara Benedek and David Rayfiel.

He's slightly more articulate than usual, but the lines still fall from his lips like beaten boxers to the mat. Not that it much matters, given the constant mayhem.

Annaud, who wrote the adaptation with frequent collaborator Gerard Brach, showed more consideration for the cub in "The Bear" than he does for young Miss March, who is shamefully overexposed. True, Leung's bodacious, cantaloupe-colored bottom is showcased, but the only thing we miss of March's is the skin between her toes. Never mind that in portraying passion, the two seem to be demonstrating the proper use of the Salad Shooter.

Despite its hopeful title and a warm inland location, this dawdling family dramedy proves as sodden as a bed-wetter's mattress.

In some ways, Contact is just like the universe: big, star-bright and seemingly endless. Not to mention that it begins with a big bang, gradually falls into a lull and finally succumbs to entropy.

He's obsessed with the physical details instead of the human emotions. The actors are really just part of the scenery.

Alas, it's too coarsely drawn and broadly directed by Brit Jonathan Lynn to effectively skewer what ought to have been an easy target.

Slapdash Sidney Lumet directs this misbegotten three-star vehicle, an overpowered tricycle of a tale with Sean Connery, Dustin Hoffman and Matthew Broderick unconvincing as successive generations of the genetically eclectic McMullen clan.

Unfortunately, the filmmaking couple take the fetishistic masquerade far too seriously. They may describe it as a "departure" from traditional fare, but it's simply the same old action-packed guff.

It couldn't be any less revolutionary in style. It is straighter than a guitar string.

Blue Steel is a mean and unsavory celebration of misplaced misogyny milked for dollars, a mindless soup of urban neurosis and sexual loathing. It's a case of slam, bam, no thankee ma'am.

Banal performances -- Jim is still not John and Grodin is playing a second-rate variation of the uptight guy in Midnight Express -- combine with derivative plot to tell us that yuppies are too grasping for their own good.

Vacation is missing a sense of direction. With Harold Ramis in the driver's seat, it veers off course and sputters down a bumpy road. [29 July 1983, p.17]

Sparse and implausible screenplay.

Has enough dog slobber, curdled hurl and toe-jam jokes to keep its target audience amused. Older kids and overgrown ones too probably will notice that nothing much ever happens in this belabored suburban variation on "The Little Rascals."

Hardly a real pip (indeed, it has been rendered Pip-less), but then this loosey-goosey adaptation isn't aimed at those of us with library cards.

A low-key, high-tech, out-of-touch tale of a teen who builds his own personal nuclear projectile for a science project. It's an ambivalent adventure patterned on the likes of WarGames, but without the humor or action. [13 June 1986, p.29]

The Empire strikes out.

The ballplayers themselves are a well-drawn, enjoyably kooky bunch, but it's absolutely impossible to believe that they would accept Billy's leadership. (If you believe this premise, then you probably believe Marge Schott doesn't look like a Saint Bernard.) And of all the child actors in the movie, the scrawny 13-year-old star shows the least presence.

The story's tired, as are the main characters.

Blake Edwards directs this unfunny farce, a banal boozer's comedy that relies on the comedic e'clat of Basinger: basically, Barbie doing standup. Meanwhile leading man Bruce Willis is all buttoned-down and leashed.

Producer Ismail Merchant, director James Ivory and screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala bring the customary polish, but no pizzazz, to this simplistic portrait of the artist as a dirty old man.

Desperado also has some entertaining twists, some sexy goings-on, but on the whole, watching the film is about as much fun as sitting on a cactus.

Despite all their toil and trouble, the tale leaves us more bothered than bewitched.

With 10 writers gnawing on it, there is little originality left in the story.

Vapid.

Under the direction of "Die Harder's" Renny Harlin, the movie has a crackling pace and a glossy look. It's all the more pernicious for that, this slick glorification of hate and loathing that portrays women as sexually promiscuous and men as infantile, violent and feeble-minded. Here's one Ford that doesn't have a better idea.

Benefits from affecting performances from a gifted cast headed by R&B heartthrob Usher Raymond.

And while it's intermittently engaging, the drama's flatter than a sucker's wallet.

A chiller that, except for the last half hour of ghoulish effects, is undeadly dull. [02 Aug 1985, p.23]

A Roman circus of guts, glory and gallows humor, this lavish action thriller should sate the genre's increasingly bloodthirsty audience. Like the evening news, it fairly hemorrhages blood and sorrow.

While disaster yarns aren't known for subtlety, there are limits, and Volcano giddily goes beyond them.

Tucker came up with a classic, but poor Coppola has turned a great American tragedy into a gas-guzzling human comedy

Stallone will never disappoint his fans intentionally. He cowrote the script (if writing is the right word) with Stirling Silliphant to formula specs, but Over the Top hasn't got the muscle of his Rocky hits. It's Stallone showing his vulnerable side, a sort of Father Knows Best -- But Can't Put It Into Words.

Wind, an adventure loosely drawn on yachtsman Dennis Conner's run for the America's Cup, won't sail for luff or money. A wonky idea from the weighing of the anchor, it's essentially an attempt to remake Rocky with a spinnaker.

The screenplay, contrived to suit the genre, is likewise replete with stock characters. Still, many of the actors manage to bring dignity, humor and even finesse to these tired roles. Gooding has the angelic good looks of Isiah Thomas and invests Lincoln with courageous sweetness. It's too bad the part isn't better developed.

Heckerling lacks the intuition to let things flow. The actors seem rushed and the scenes incomplete. For instance, Stacy and her brother Brad (Reinhold) almost build a poignant scene outside the abortion clinic. Just when they're about to show us their stuff, poof, it's off for a car crash or a football game. [13 Aug 1982]

Cadence might once have been pertinent, revolutionary or politically correct, but it's definitely out of step with the times

It's low-budget, rough-cut documentary, stained-sheet ugly moviemaking, suited to Borden's simple-minded message.

An unholy union of dark comedy, spectral effects and splattered gore that few filmgoers will dare embrace. [19 July 1996, p.B07]

The movie is a little crude for the subtlety of the emotions it plays with.

But this hackneyed stalker-rama, which pretends to be a call for gun control, ultimately is little more than an excuse to turn the bad guy into a human colander. The better to strain the moral pasta.

Breaks no new ground.

For a while, the film is screamingly funny, but the further it goes, the more muddled the narrative becomes.

It's a richly appointed production that's hard to take seriously since the monks all look vaguely like Marty Feldman.

Kansas City is basically a head-scratcher.

Frankly, those wonderfully corny old high-in-the-sky Airport movies were more dramatically satisfying than this, a barren adaptation of Piers Paul Read's nonfiction bestseller, directed by Frank Marshall.

Shrill and slovenly opus.

A brain-cramping and eye-straining experiment in digital filmmaking.

A sadly dull and unimaginative outing.

Unfortunately, the story isn't inventive and Newell's methodical approach to it verges on monotony.

Though Warner Bros. boasts this is their most expensive animated project ever, it's hard to see where all that money went in terms of artistry or technical craftsmanship.

Nightmares, an anthology of suspense shorts, is about as scary as getting up to face another day. It's teddy-bear terrifying, definitely not for those who're into blood and guts. [09 Sep 1983, p.23]

Tron turns out to be an inorganic Fantastic Voyage, a movie with which only a computer programmer could interface. The acting is everything you'd expect from a Disney film, with Jeff Bridges aping Harrison Ford for all he's worth. There's even a computerized tinkerbell and a computer kiss. It's all a little much too have output. [09 July 1982, p.13]

A dumb guy comedy about dumb guys by dumb guys and for dumb guys.

The audience hasn't the slightest idea what is going on.

Although the newly paunchy Stallone is credible as a weak, conflicted small-time sheriff, this suburban "Serpico" is a noble, passionless charade.

Alongside this silly kiddie Halloween comedy, reruns of Hee Haw seem works of great comic sophistication.

Its splendor cannot be denied, but then again neither can the emptiness of this Henry James adaptation.

Ricki Lake makes an appealing, though unlikely, fairy tale heroine in the derivative romance Mrs. Winterbourne: If only this stale trifle didn't call for the bewitching or pixilating, for the abracadabra of a Bullock or a Pfeiffer. For a Cinderella story, it's sorely without magic.

Aside from Danner and Ivey, who's also miscast, performances are steady if uninspired. Silverman is engaging but hasn't yet learned to work the camera like the crowd. But all their efforts hardly matter given the surprisingly unsteady pace set by Tony award-winning director Gene Saks, who collaborated with Simon on the successful film versions of "The Odd Couple" and "Barefoot in the Park." Caught between the strictures of stage and the freedoms of film, Saks and Simon (and producer Ray Stark) compromise with an amorphous hybrid that's stagey and forced. [26 Dec 1986]

The movie lacks luster, and that quintessentially adolescent passion that fueled "Fast Times at Ridgemont High." There's no punch to the pacing, and the players, though pleasant, are uninspired by Howard Deutch, who is directing his first feature film after doing videos, including one from Ringwald's second movie, "Sixteen Candles." The happy ending, changed to suit the tastes of preview audiences, steals the movie's potential pathos, and turns teen trauma into so much gooey, rose-colored mush. [28 Feb 1986, p.11]

A Ninja turtle soup of computer gimmicks, karate chops and kiddie Confucianism.

Alien Nation wants to be "In the Heat of the Night" as science fiction, but it's neither morally instructive nor prophetic. It proves a lumbering marriage of action and sci-fi that alienates both audiences. It's too dull for one and too dumb for the other.

Robert Redford does everything but wear a crown of thorns as the selfless war hero of The Last Castle, a heavy-handed military prison melodrama.

A weak handshake of a movie, it is slightly repellent -- hardly gripping, much less knuckle-whitening. This "Psycho" for fatsos is as self-aware as it is styleless.

This belabored charade of mistaken identities is guided by Herbert Ross, who has directed everything from The Sunshine Boys to Footloose. Apparently, he's decided to cater to younger moviegoers with this discordant mix of MTV imagery and classic farce.

Still of the Night is a red herring all its own. It's a mystery that isn't a mystery, a thriller that isn't a thriller. What's more bothersome, the corpse is the most animated member of the cast. [17 Dec 1982, p.19]

An amiably dopey teen movie.

Seditious themes aside, the adventure fails mostly because Ward never achieves super- hero status. He never quite lives up to the name RE-MO. Sluggo maybe.

Twister not only blows, it sucks, too.

The Three Musketeers, a rusty trio of middle-aged retirees, have all but changed their motto from "All for one and one for all" to "I have fallen and I can't get up" in this less-than-rollicking adaptation.

Despite the threatened NC-17 rating, there's nothing remotely sexy about this stone-cold escapade. It only reaffirms the stodgy reputation of the British, who think hot to trot means let's go fox hunting.

If there's an amnesia movie worse than Overboard, it slips my mind.

Disney just doesn't know when to give up on a dead project, which is the only thing that accounts for the studio's scene-for-scene remake of Little Indian, Big City, a French farce the corporation dubbed and released exactly one year ago. (It sank faster than a canoe full of Fantasia hippos.)

Brad Silberling, a TV director (Brooklyn Bridge, NYPD Blue) making his feature debut, obviously is out of his element in this grandiose extravaganza of sets and effects. Still, that doesn't explain the inert performances of Moriarty and her henchman, Eric Idle, and sundry other supporting characters. Much of the blame belongs to Sherri Stoner, Deanna Oliver and the many ghost writers who created this ghoulish hash of teen romance, father-and-child reunion and monster mash.

A purgatory of low-budget interplanetary adventure.

Like most plays transferred to screen, Oleanna still bears traces of grease paint. Actually, all the cold cream in the world wouldn't make this verbose material in the least cinematic -- not that Mamet has put much effort into adapting the original anyway. Most of the action takes place in the professor's office. Luckily, it has a window through which we, like bored grade schoolers, can escape from time to time.

Although III claims seven times as much action as ever before, the movie is still so boring that even the love interest (Robyn Lively) leaves early. She's no Kung Fool.

Baby Boom is an '80s fable based on a beer ad philosophy.

Russell is an inoffensive Mel Gibson clone here. But Stallone is an unlovable lummox, preposterous because he takes himself so seriously. Even when he attempts to laugh at himself, his quips fall like clods on coffins. His bravery is braggadocio. Let's hope this will be the last of Tango.

Writer Alan Sharp gets so caught up in the legend and the lush language that he doesn't seem to know he's written "Death Wish" in kilts.

Troop Beverly Hills is a dog of a movie, one of those nasty little yappy dogs with fancy hairdos, pedicures and pedigrees.

Like the mythological creatures it celebrates, the movie appears bound for extinction.

A trite vehicle that lumbers along like its namesake. Clankety-clank. [16 Mar 1984, p.19]

Ninety minutes of Shock Treatment feels like a week in "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood," a Quaalude interlude, a quart of Sanka laced with Valium. No jolt...Despite flashy lights, splashy sets and plump girls in tight white corsets, "S.T.'s" a bore -- a blatant try for teeny-punk bucks. It's a lesson for filmmakers: You can't force a cult film, they just happen. [28 May 1982, p.13]

The result is a script so needlessly complicated that it defies comprehension.

Isabelle Huppert and generic Steve Guttenberg prove incompatible costars in The Bedroom Window, a cockamamie mystery that finds these bi-continentals drawn together like, say, refrigerator magnets to styrofoam coolers. Yes, it's magic.

Mr. Whipple squeezing his Charmin is scarier than this phony baloney computer effects-driven anaconda.

The script boasts more writers than the computerized menagerie's got megabytes, but they haven't come up with much variety or humor in what is essentially a string of catastrophes.

Anarchistic, self-indulgent and monumentally self-obsessed.

Less Than Zero, an aptly titled tale of snooty California drug snorters, is dumber and duller than primordial ooze. It's one of those silly speed-bumps-in-the-fast-lane laments, though it does have a significant message: Get off the freeway or take the last exit ramp to the Betty Ford Clinic in the sky.

There's a sense of mystery in this purply palette and one of majesty in the landscapes, but the drama of the drawings is never really echoed by the skimpy and predictable story.

Depressing as it is dull as it is dumb.

Hardly out of the driveway before director Penny Marshall loses control.

About as persuasively ethnic as an episode of "Friends."

It's Mondo Machismo, Hollywood on safari, a self-aggrandizing epic reeking of man scent.

Though it's allegedly a comedy, there is nothing funny about this tasteless, shallow and mean-spirited slam.

The trail is all too familiar and pretty soon we recollect why westerns lost their appeal. [28 June 1985, p.27]

If laughter is the best medicine, Patch Adams is but a sugary, fitfully amusing placebo.

Clan's greatest fault, however, is simply that it is an epic bore. [28 Feb 1986, p.11]

Sans emotional depth or narrative drive, Lee's latest flick is little more than a profane litany punctuated by Oscar-caliber orgasms.