Rita Kempley

What we have here is a movie with not just one, but a family pack of psychos.

A magnificent melodrama that draws both tears and laughter from the everyday give-and-take of seemingly ordinary souls.

The movie is not only a better version of the book, it's a work unto itself.

Basically "Beaches" without Hershey and the salt water. This insipid suck-face-athon provokes the gag reflex.

A refreshing fall film. [18 Sep 1981, p.19]

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.

Phillip Noyce, the Australian who directed "Patriot Games" and "Dead Calm," knows from thrillers, but "Sliver" is more of a friller. It's not scary but the decorator was good. Stone, who spends a considerable amount of time biting her lip, chewing her finger, moaning, grunting, writhing and wiggling, also proves that she's a good actress when she is wearing her underpants. It's just that Baldwin can leave no side of Stone unturned and there's so little time to emote.

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.

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.

A delectable reworking of the ultimate girl's myth, a corporate Cinderella story with shades of a self-made Pygmalion.

Unfortunately the cast members are made into symbols themselves, bereft of blood and emotion, under the direction of the great John Huston. It's like a death pageant, grueling and dismal and distant...It is a dreary process at best. And this film is a tedious and time-consuming study of decay and lost values, lost souls and lost empires. [13 July 1984, p.17]

Along with a lot of 10-gallon laughs, Happy, Texas rustles up plenty of goodwill for its larcenous, sexually ambiguous leading men.

A glittery but dunderheaded murder mystery.

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

It's an amusing vehicle for Pryor and Candy, amiable partners wallowing in monetary ecstasy. [24 May 1985, p.25]

Delicious with foreboding, a masterly suspense thriller that toys with our anticipation like a well-fed cat.

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

Actress Rosanna Arquette and video vamp Madonna star in this wonderful new-wave mix-up, directed by the difficult but dynamic Susan Seidelman. Arquette is angelic as the outsider Roberta looking to get in, a quixotic New Jersey housewife kept in a yuppie palace by her husband, the hot tub man (Mark Blum).

Movies don't come much lamer than Fools Rush In.

Filled as it is with unforced errors, A League of Their Own isn't a perfect picture, but it is irresistibly ebullient with not one, but nine Babes on base.

There's not much adventure on these high seas. This buccaneering boondoggle is more like a slow voyage aboard the PMS Pinafore. [22 Dec 1995, p.C06]

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.

Though the comedy falls short of a debacle -- which is what such egocentric projects tend to be -- it isn't as sharp, fast or funny as Rock's stand-up routines.

Take the "dle" out of "poodle" and you've pretty much got the leitmotif of Look Who's Talking Now, a crude and mawkish film in which dogs attempt to communicate with Kirstie Alley and John Travolta.

A sweet but labored love story.

The sparks don't fly -- they fall down and they can't get up.

Weird, warm, monumentally entertaining comedy.

For all its commonplace ingredients, Miami Blues is uncommonly entertaining, thanks in large part to Ward, Baldwin and Leigh, who give gutty, energetic performances

Ramis...does extract every last yuk from this lively clash of id and superego, this spoofy buddies' odyssey from underworld to Prozac nation.

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.

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.

Bewildering, tediously violent.

Schlocky, sluggish shoot-'em-up.

Nicely acted, wonderfully scenic but emotionally vapid.

Along with witty, appropriately rough-hewn repartee and genuine poignancy, writer Simon Beaufoy manages to sustain suspense to the last gyration.

You seldom leave a theater walking on air, much less float all through a movie. But the joyous Bend It Like Beckham never lets you down.

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.

Unfortunately, Harrer's inner struggle isn't as grand as the sweep of Jean-Jacques Annaud's direction.

An absorbing, if overlong adaptation of Tom Clancy's bestseller.

There's the scene in which Jacques, the French Canadian proprietor of the Power and Glory, tells Laura, "I am the Great Went," to which she responds, "I am the muffin." Jacques returns, "I'm as blank as a fart." Maybe all Jacques is saying is "I am full of gas." Certainly Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me seems to be.

Well-intentioned but ludicrous tale.

Ironically, the filmmakers don't seem to realize that their movie is even shallower and sillier than its targets.

The decade has been fondly spoofed in capers like "The Brady Bunch," but Lee's film takes a much more searing, if initially hilarious look at the sexual revolution's migration to a New England suburb and the community's subsequent meltdown. [17 October 1997, p.D6]

The Road Warrior is ferocious and unpredictable. It's energetic. It's peculiar. It's big and it's dirty. But mostly it's cosmically irrelevant. Hey, but, one thing's for sure, we are driven.

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.

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.

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.

The narrative shifts from romance to adventure the way Cheetah used to hop from foot to foot, but Sommers nevertheless delivers a bully family picture.

Bogdanovich, who worked with McMurtry on the Last Picture Show screenplay, adapted this one on his own. It's kinda like he tried to pare down the big ol' Encyclopaedia Britannica and couldn't bear to leave out nothin' -- a lot of Billy Joe Bob types talking guff and hogwash and settin' round the Burger King eating fried eggs. This is purty near the worst movie of the whole year.

A quirky, tender, splendidly acted fable.

The elephant, whose last film was Operation Dumbo Drop, steals the three-ring circus with its charming personality and an amazing 50-command repertoire.

Jaws 3-D, in which the Amity horror swims south to Florida, looks a lot like a Poligrip commercial, what with its extreme close-ups of the Great White's artificial chompers. [29 July 1983, p.17]

Bound, a diabolically clever caper, isn't nearly so deep as the genre it kids.

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

An entertaining tangle of pop aesthetic and comic book myth that occasionally bogs down, but manages to be ingratiating for all its defects.

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.

Bill Murray and Richard Dreyfuss star in this hilarious brain-teaser about a patient who suffers acute separation anxiety when his psychiatrist goes on vacation.

A film that gets in your face and stays there, it ultimately subverts all that effort with its improbably upbeat conclusion. Still, the performances are technically knockouts, the kind that leave your underbelly churning.

Like Shepherd's speech, The American President touches on all manner of issues but illumines none of them. And while there are some engaging glimpses of the president's staff in action...the film's principal pleasures lie in the president's pursuit of a first lady.

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

Reprising the role, Chevy Chase is reliably irreverent as the tangle-footed, many-monikered reporter.

The fun never stops because it never starts.

The story holds a potential for sap that is mostly unfulfilled thanks to Beresford's stately approach, the stars' better judgment and the protagonists' sharp wits. Admirably, Driving Miss Daisy takes the road less traveled.

A tarted-up but tedious reprise of the '70s TV series.

The hero's feats are implausible even by action standards, but screenwriters Tony Puryear and Walon Green have concocted one of the summer's most spectacular action sequences.

A purgatory of low-budget interplanetary adventure.

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]

It doesn't take extra-sensory perspiration, as Ernest would say, to realize this undertaking is dumber than jaywalking at the Indy 500.

Warmhearted, wonderfully witty.

Except for pedophiles, it's hard to imagine who'll be drawn to this irresponsible Little Bo Peep show.

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

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

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

Like most spoofs, it works till the joke gets old (about half way through) and then tedium prevails. But when it's good, it's really got the guffaws.

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]

It's stingy at heart. Burton, who collaborated with British screenwriter Jonathan Gems, brings nothing of "Edward Scissorhands's" magic or "Beetlejuice's" wacky fun to this sadly empty exercise. Aimlessly plotted and blandly written.

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

This engrossing mystery-comedy peeks through the keyholes of the rich and infamous in a manner both droll and delicious.

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.

The performances are appealing, but Bud Yorkin of "All in the Family" directs as if everyone were going to get bored and run out for popcorn at the next commercial break. [24 Jan 1986, p.23]

Sexy and 70ish, Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas strut their stuff as grey foxes in the giddy, gag-happy gangster spoof for golden-agers, Tough Guys. These rough-and-tumblers seem to be drinking from that fountain of youth the seniors sought in "Cocoon."

It's a showcase for Nicholson in an astounding performance as the dim but lovable hit man, Charley Partanna. [14 June 1985, p.27]

Mary Stuart Masterson, a delicate blond, steals the show as the sensitive gal under the tomboy's leather jacket, her natural magnetism offsetting the story's predictability.

It's the individual characters, so carefully crafted, who count, as opposed to a tidy conclusion.

Kid II is an enlightening experience. It teaches you a little about courage, mercy, and the zen of movie-cycle maintenance.

A riot from start to finish, Carrey's first feature comedy is as cheerfully bawdy as it is idiotically inventive.

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 insufferable, self-important, sloppily made bore.

Breaks no new ground.

A didactic collegiate farce -- "Animal House" with pan-African politics, and an enormously embarrassing encore. Tell an inexperienced director he's a genius, and you create Dr. Frankenstein. School Daze, with its pompous patchwork plot, is an arrogant, humorless, sexist mess.

Hilarious ... It's dishy, but not swishy.

The nonsensical screenplay can barely stand-up to the hellzapoppin, Beelzebubbin effects mustered by first-time director Mark Dippe.

Lacks the edge and depth of a truly inspired work.

Barbra Streisand's lovely adaptation of Pat Conroy's bestseller echoes the novel's seductive cadences, the cries of summer gulls, the slapping of the Atlantic on the South Carolina shores. An emotionally satisfying film, The Prince of Tides loses some of the stuff readers hold dear, but the pull of the sea, its saltiness too, lingers. As a story of rebirth through self-exploration, it seems ideally suited to this season of illumination.

Francis Ford Coppola magically recreates the era, its movies and its music, in this razzle-dazzle celebration, some fact and some fiction.

The infuriatingly slow pace proves a point, but it makes for a gritty-eyed viewer with mashed potatoes for brains...It's a relief to escape the theater after this one, though it's good for several hours of discussion over dinner. It's not entertaining, but it does fall into the should-see category. Pop a couple of Stress-Tabs before you go. [2 Oct 1981, p.17]

Chase presides amiably over this uneven but affable slapstick comedy.

Strictly a vanity vehicle with a mess of star babies on board. That would be just fine if it didn't take us down the same old cul-de-sac. But it does, and with a vengeance.

For all their sass, brass and bewitchery, the starring troika can't breathe life into these characters, much less transform them from women scorned into hellbent furies.

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.

While it celebrates the triumph of humor, invention and the human spirit, Life Is Beautiful is not the transporting experience it might have been. Benigni knows how to make us laugh, but he has not yet figured out how to make us cry.

A Kiss Before Dying is so wooden, it wouldn't hurt to spray for Dutch elm disease. Adapted from Ira Levin's intricate suspense thriller, it becomes another perfunctory sex-and-death parable in the hands of Fatal Attraction's screenwriter James Dearden, who has dismantled the original plot and turned it on end. Needless to say, it is far less suspenseful when you find out who did it in the first scene. [26 Apr 1991, p.B6]

A cheerful romp through a fussy New York hotel.

Everything from time travel to melodrama figures in this whimsically daft story, a romanticization that tries your patience even as your tear ducts well.

Landau and Wuhl give especially heartfelt performances under the obviously sympathetic direction of Barry Primus, who based the story on his own attempts to finance a project.

Overall, this is a well-crafted, carefully paced, and appropriately cerebral work -- if the intention is to ape Le Carre's writing style, that is, and like the writer, de-glamorize the spy genre. If you're a fan of the style, this film will please.

War is hellishly entertaining, especially in Behind Enemy Lines, a 21-gun salute to the commitment and preparedness of the U.S. military.

Ought to be called "Hook, Line and Stinker."

Stinketh like the breath of a dyspeptic dragon.

Passionately anticipated and much ballyhooed, the film, alas, is little more than a foppish, fang de siecle costume drama. Its pulse barely registers.

A morbid and sticky adaptation of James Herbert's best-selling novel, this curious meditation on death, dogs and the afterlife hardly lives up to its billing as family fare.

Final Analysis, an implausible psycho thriller with Kim Basinger, Uma Thurman and Richard Gere, has so many twists, turns and backward leaps, the actors tackle their work like trained poodles in a circus act.

Despite its herky-jerky pace and aimlessness of plot, Three Fugitives is engaging sport, primarily enjoyable for the hearty teamwork of Nolte and Short -- a comedic contretemps as bruising as a Punch and Judy show.

Deep, it's not. But it is glossy, funny and well-performed. And like other ensemble movies, it's stronger on character than plot as it shifts from relationship to relationship to draw a picture of the whole. [28 June 1985, p.27]

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

Chris Farley walks into walls, trips over invisible banana peels and otherwise makes a fat ass of himself in this imbecilic, slapstick adventure from the producers of "Dumb and Dumber."

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

A lively, affectionate and well-acted romantic comedy, takes a raunchy look at relationships from the black male perspective.

If you only live twice, spend both lifetimes avoiding it.

Not only dense, dark and deeply introspective, it's also as remote as it's chilly.

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.

Caddyshack II, a feeble follow-up to the 1980 laff riot, is lamer than a duck with bunions, and dumber than grubs. It's patronizing and clumsily manipulative, and top banana Jackie Mason is upstaged by the gopher puppet.

It is a wacky, happy, daring, darkly comic tale of parenting outside the law. It celebrates the middle-of-the-road dreams of decidedly off-center folks. It's a bundle of joy.

Wise Guys, a surprisingly sweet, but sluggish Mafia farce, teams easy-going Joe Piscopo with driven, dangerous Danny De Vito in a neo-Abbott and Costello Meet the Godfather.

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.

It isn't wildly imaginative, but its subjects are novel enough in their own right. They're a little bit country and a little bit Rachmaninoff.

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

Teen Wolf Too is nothing a jar of Nair wouldn't cure.

Not much really happens here, and if you're looking for motivation or reasonable plot evolution or anything more than a night that feels like sitting in the stands at a really rowdy Redskins game, don't hail this cab...It's upbeat, bumper to bumper: squeals on wheels. [16 Dec 1983, p.23]

The Decline of the American Empire is certainly the year's most intellectual work, a frequently funny, unrepressed meditation on midnight in North America. It's the kind of warning you'd expect from a middle-aged, over-educated male, going soft 'round the middle and figuring the world is too.

Overall Nichols, Simon and especially Broderick find fresh threads in the old fatigues.

Sadly, The Secret of NIMH is beautiful but unbalanced: The animators gambled when they should have gamboled. [09 July 1982, p.13]

An entertaining look under the tent flaps of the Clinton campaign, "The War Room" fairly bristles with the frenetic energy, flat-out fun and Southern-fried cunning that won the White House. It's a documentary, though not a hard-hitting one, about presidential politics as reinvented by Bill Clinton's cagey generals, George Stephanopoulos and James Carville.

This sexually explicit, violent scenario never quite coalesces, but it's a superbly scored, good-looking film, if never quite so artful or well-acted as "Miami Vice." [1 Nov 1985, p.21]

With its spectacular scenery, stupefying effects and epic scope, is a dream come true.

A farce founded on a mix-up at a sperm bank, Made in America is a simplistic but amiable dip in the nation's multicultural fondue pot.

Like Zorg, we are bedazzled by Betty's bright eyes, big moue and wild child's ways.

The overall effect is like wading through hospital waste. Verhoeven, who also directed the maliciously stylistic "Robocop," disappoints with this appalling onslaught of blood and boredom.

It's a snuff movie, all dressed up, for self-abusive audiences...You feel filthy after seeing this stuff, paying to be a party to this sad, sordid business, watching this woman being used during and, now, after life. [11 Nov 1983, p.25]

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

Though lovely to behold, this film isn't meant to send you home with a song in your heart.

We've seen it all before, most recently in "Gardens of Stone," most romantically in "An Officer and a Gentleman," but never more elegantly than here as Kubrick sustains the athletic ballet of obstacle courses and white-glove inspections for a breathtaking 40 minutes.

The rare film that is capable of offending both Trent Lott and Al Sharpton.

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.

Gets by on quirky charm and slacker chic-but just barely.

Murphy owes much of his success to the amazing special-effects makeup by Rick Baker ("An American Werewolf in London"), but he brings a tenderness and dignity to the performance that he has never shown before.

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

Broadly acted and badly directed, the cast never clicks and the gags fall flat. (Or, they stoop to dog flatulence.) This is a movie made for one-stop shoppers.

Perhaps Steven Soderbergh's metamorphosis from clever Cajun auteur ("sex, lies, and videotape") to heavy-duty Eastern European angst-master has been altogether too successful. Like authentic Soviet Bloc cinema, Kafka makes its audience suffer along with its heroes.

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]

Lacks emotional depth and intellectual sincerity.

Affecting, gloriously acted.

Your own final destination just might be the box office, to demand your money back.

The most surprising thing about the movie is that somebody bothered to make it in the first place.

Sure it's slight, but also as cute as the curly tail on its tender protagonist.

Kansas City is basically a head-scratcher.

A sorry comedy. [31 March 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.

Like the South, the movie is sumptuous and somnolent.

Though the film gleams with Howard's customary spit polish, there's no denying that the story is pitted with plot holes.

Jackie Gleason and Tom Hanks team entertainingly in Nothing in Common, a sugar-coated variation on "Death of a Salesman." It proves an uncommonly funny drama, its painful truths brightened by Hanks' clowning glory and Gleason's glowering deadpan. [1 Aug 1986, p.25]

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.

Writer-director Todd Solondz is far from clueless when it comes to the agonies of early adolescence, which he mercilessly re-creates in his caustic suburban comedy Welcome to the Dollhouse.

Shrill and slovenly opus.

The characters are as thin as the air at 26,000 feet, and the story as silly as anyone willing to assault K2 in a punishing blizzard.

Bland as a fortune cookie and as trite as the message inside.

A compelling French Canadian drama.

"Nerds" is erratic -- more gags work than don't, but more situations don't work than do. There are some great throwaway lines. [10 Aug. 1984, p.23]

Basically the filmmaker reminds us of his affection for social misfits, but without much conviction. He's simply too hip to commit himself to his beliefs, and a relentless frivolity prevails. Still Cry-Baby is not without its spit-curled charms, its amusing lines and its funky famous-name cameos.

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

A sadly dull and unimaginative outing.

Attention all units: Slapstick in progress in the vicinity of Police Academy. Suspects wanted for mugging the camera and possession of night shtiks with intent to incite a laugh riot. Please respond to this blues burlesque, a uniformly funny hit sure to have a long run. Its target audience -- those who can take their T&A with a grain of assault. Its plot -- a combo of "Animal House" and "An Officer and a Gentleman." Its stars -- a rainbow coalition of hot newcomers and dependable, unexpendable pros. [23 Mar 1984, p.23]

Childhood anecdotes and charming vignettes are set against bright-light, big-city sets, a-dazzle with beautiful players. All that doesn't disguise the emptiness at the center of Radio Days, which misses the momentum that comes with a plot.

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

It's a clumsy, laughable alarm-ringer from Sidney Lumet, who looks at the power-lunchers and the new right, and shakes his head rather audibly. [31 Jan 1986, p.23]

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.

The Witches is a wickedly funny final bow for Muppeteer Jim Henson.

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.

Carrey is not only under control, but funnier than ever.

Oink. Oink. Porky's II: The Next Day is just swill. But the millions who pigged out on "Porky's" will go hog-wild for No. 2: It's packed with the same old sub-teen smut and subliterate sanctimony. Sex is all talk and dropped britches and one so-so hootchy-kootchy queen's flabby fling. At the same time, it's sexist and sexless, acted by hams and written by bores. [1 July 1983, p.21]

Though far from a seamless work, the film is gorgeously crafted, and Silberling obviously has a passion for angels. But then these days, who doesn't?

Promises to speed up the pacemakers of grumpy old Republicans with its ruthless indictment of the unzipped presidency.

Written and produced by John Hughes, it's a kiddie action comedy much indebted to Hughes's "Home Alone," but with much less of its meanness.

This is not a movie that wraps up its story in a tidy bow, but it's a lot more fun than most of the ones that do.

Doesn't go down smooth, but it doesn't promise to.

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]

Falling in Love is a nice movie, a holiday movie with a Christmas setting with a happy ending. It's a Christmas shoppers' matinee and a commuters' guide to love in the afternoon, but not exactly an affair to remember.

An amusing debut for both the writer and director, who benefit from Caine's tongue and cheeky turn as the unbuttoned-down Graham.

An abominable, abdominal comedy. Aside from its tastelessness and dawdling pace, the movie’s chief problem is the lackluster chemistry between leading lummoxes Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels.

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.

When it comes to style and sophistication, Walt Disney's live-action "Mr. Magoo" ranks slightly above plastic doggie doo and slightly below rubber chicken. The cartoon Magoo, so memorably voiced by the late Jim Backus, would never have stooped so low for a laugh, yet the visually challenged old gentleman's near mishaps gave you something to smile about. [25 Dec 1997, p.C11]

Jon Amiel, who previously directed "Sommersby," delivers a taut, gripping thriller and, with the help of his accomplished leads, succeeds in camouflaging some of the mammoth holes in Ann Biderman and David Madsen's otherwise intelligent and inventive screenplay.

This is painless sexual politics, a fiendish comedy full of prickles and pain and the bright shiny pinks of a matador's cape. The farce falters from time to time, the pace is imperfect, but who can resist this "Twilight Zone" of limitless coincidences?

Brainstorm is like being caught in a Novocaine hurricane -- if you're not a numbskull when you walk in, you will be by the time you walk out. Talk about your brain drain. [30 Sept 1983, p.19]

Lame jokes, dull cast, stale plot. Ski Patrol, ski-daddle.

Piddling spoof.

And even though the jokes keep on coming, not all are side-splitters. But before it's all over, they will have viewers howling at one or more pants-wettingly silly moments.

There is nothing that would frighten anyone in this amusing, if pat, little movie. The witty but meandering screenplay shows future promise for first-time writer Eric Luke, a guy who used to work in a sci-fi book store. [12 July 1985, p.27]

An intimate, sentimental coming-of-age drama, a sweet little puppy love movie crushed by the enormity of its tragic twists.

An utterly infectious romance between an African American and an Indian African emigre, this seductively funny film measures the pull of roots against the tug of heartstrings. It is also a lesson in the pitfalls of color-consciousness.

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]

Whatever its faults, it is humble, adult fare and welcome in this age of grandiose children's games.

The Natural is a likable baseball saga, a big, old messy metaphor that says: You may be middle-aged, America, but you can still hit one out of the park. [11 May 1984, p.25]

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

A flat-out hilarious celebration of B-moviemaking mastery. [19 Apr 1996, p.G06]

Broken Arrow, a deafening, brain-deadening action thriller, takes a mighty blase approach to nuking Denver.

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

An edgy, irreverent, thoroughly winning comedy.

Despite Allen's sincere face; Bridges' quirky, effective portrayal; some exquisite effects; and many funny moments, the film falters at the finish, if not a little before. Mostly it never delivers what it promises -- an alien with all the right answers. [14 Dec 1984, p.31]

Winger gets a 10 on the charismometer and gives the film its warmth and innocence. Russell, a wry sensation as Marilyn Monroe in "Insignificance," plays this femme fatale for keeps.

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.

David Lynch's disastrous film adaptation of Fank Herbert's science-fiction classic turns epic to myopic. [14 Dec 1984, p.31]

A dexterously balanced killer thriller by the idiosyncratic Frears, whose every scene becomes a matter of life and death.

Dustin Hoffman's on a roll in Tootsie, a role-reversal movie that plays like the flip side of "Victor/Victoria." Hoffman may be dressed as a woman, but this film is no drag. [17 Dec 1982, p.19]

The Other Sister is sanctimonious, sanitized fare primarily preoccupied with patting its own back and plucking our heartstrings.

Star Wars had all the right stuff, and unlike its confounding progenitor, "2001: A Space Odyssey," it was fairy-tale simple: "A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away," good met evil. [Special Edition]

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]

This preposterous stalker flick, in fact, has less to do with America's favorite pastime or Gil's psychosis than with Hollywood's own obsession with blood sport. And for all British director Tony Scott knows about baseball, the thing might as well have been set in a cabbage patch.

Cruise is walking in the footsteps of Troy Donahue and John Travolta here. He does what comes easy. He bumps and grinds and grins till his lips ache. It's a performance with all the integrity of wax fruit. And Cocktail is mud in your eye.

The Mission is majestic, sometimes moving, sometimes mawkish. Should you choose to accept it, your religious tolerance will be tested. But there are rewards -- fascinating insights into the byzantine business of diplomacy and gorgeous photography of the roaring Iguazu Falls, an eden of fog and roaring water, and of the sleepy walled city of Cartagena.

A modestly budgeted but richly rewarding look at a Tennessee housewife's search for a better life.

Yentl is Streisand. Either you like her or you don't. And if a little Streisand means a lot, then a lot is what you've got. [09 Dec 1983, p.25]

Amelie is joie de vivre in a nougat.

Robin Hood: Men in Tights is a pointless and untimely lampoon of Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves from the increasingly creaky spoofmeister Mel Brooks. A predictable onslaught of bad taste and worse jokes, it mostly targets not the conventions of action-adventures but the sexual preferences of the merry men, who are variously referred to as pansies, fagalas and fruits. Brooks fills in the spaces with broadsides derogatory to women and the one interest group you can readily afford to offend on film -- blind folks.

Batteries is a strange kids' movie, a queer mix of violence and otherworldly benevolence. It might have been a good idea, a story of the vanishing urban neighborhood and gentrification by tycoon. But half-pint aliens to the rescue? It's time E.T. went home.

Tin Men is a tale of transitions and a test of mettle, as sweet as a slow dance, as classy and cumbersome as a Coupe de Ville.

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]

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

With both left and right wings flapping, it is a dandy thriller for political moderates... It's smart, but not too smart, like a Chuck Norris movie if Chuck got a PhD.

Outbreak is an absolute hoot thanks primarily to director Wolfgang Petersen's rabid pacing and the great care he brings to setting up the story and its probability.

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

Essentially "Death Wish" in pantyhose. Like that earlier inflammatory fable, this blatant button-pusher plays upon our most primal emotions as well as the increasing disdain for the criminal justice system. It's a crude but effective promotion for frontier-style vigilantism.

Frankly, scarier critters have checked into Roach Motels.

Redundant, humorless and overlong screenplay.

A tantalizing spine-tingler.

The scariest thing about this hokey bombast is that it got made in the first place.

Soderbergh won't hit the Oscar jackpot with Ocean's Eleven, but he has come up with a stylish winner.

Solemn, earnest and as laboriously paced as a fat Sicilian's funeral procession.

Beyond Thunderdome the film falters. The new, mild Max is banished to the desert, where he meets a tribe of feral children and leads them out of the desert like Moses. Naturally, it's a pleasure to watch Gibson, no matter what his mood. And as usual, the costumes and sets are imaginative and elaborate. But since "The Road Warrior," punks have adopted the style and none of it looks that original anymore. [12 July 1985, p.27]

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.

Cyrano de Bergerac is played full tilt, like Don Quixote against the windmills. An enthusiastic melodrama, it spills emotions like stars across the noble screen.

Parker, a director of breadth, not depth, never supplies the big answers, but he does powerfully depict the climate of the Confederacy in the "Freedom Summer" of 1964.

Writing with his old partner Marshall Brickman ("Sleeper," "Annie Hall," "Manhattan"), Allen produces his blithest film ever. It's an amiable caper descended from the "Thin Man" series, with Keaton as a kookier Nora Charles and Allen not as Nick but Asta, their twitchy wire-haired fox terrier.

They don't come any cuter than The Adventures of Milo and Otis, a heartwarming, tail-thumping story about a curious kitten and his pug-nosed puppy pal. It's totally awwwwww-some.

A typical student film with its arty angles, bad lighting and pretentious observations.

The insane casting: When was the last time Julianne Moore cracked you up?

Smokey and the Bandit meets the Bad News Bears. [16 July 1982, p.11]

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]

A poetic but perplexing tale of a mob moll's redemption.

Weaned on the homilies of "Happy Days" and the hominy grits of Mayberry, Ron Howard brings sitcom aphorisms to bear on the sticky-fingered realities of the beamish Parenthood.

An episodic drama rich in sly humor and symbolic imagery.

Schmaltzy.

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

A live-action cartoon without dramatic focus, a solid structure or discernible theme.

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

Carvey is such a lovable doofus and Myers such a well-intentioned naif that it's hard to get down on them, especially considering that the heirs to their niche in pop iconography are Beavis and Butt-head.

Zwick gets the most out of his young cast, and you do believe that Lowe and Moore are drawn to each other against all good sense. Lowe offers the first sympathetic performance of his career. And Moore, her voice husky as burnt sugar, is sure to succeed Debra Winger as our fresh-scrubbed sex symbol. And to think that only last year, they were shallow brat-packers in "St. Elmo's Fire." [4 July 1986, p.N29]

This character was an abusive swine. Perhaps it would be best to let his art stand on its own.

Director DeVito, who never did know when to quit, manages to be as clever as he is vicious. His first movie, "Throw Momma From the Train," seems almost lyrical in comparison to the ruthlessness of this vehicle.

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

The fat cats of Hollywood have coughed up a hairball.

Brings bite as well as bark to the funnier sequel.

There are insightful scenes, fragmented scenes and sudden outbreaks of violence. It's a little like mixing the white and the dark loads, but somehow it all comes out in the wash and love prevails. [28 Mar 1986, p.25]