Rita Kempley

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]

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

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

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.

Brings bite as well as bark to the funnier sequel.

Top Gun is basically "An Officer and a Gentleman" with less spirit and depth. But it's still fine formula movie-making -- like a feature-length "Be All That You Can Be" commercial. It's got lots of loud music, hot colors, heat-seeking missiles and other pointed objects. Real men squint into the radar's gleam below deck, while real men hunt MiGs upstairs. [16 May 1986, p.29]

An infectious albeit formulaic game of Cinderella football, this happy athletic romp seems to know just how wheezy it is, but the team grunts "hut, hut," and puts it right on the numbers anyway. It's "Hoosiers" with a pigskin pumpkin and a lot more sis-boom-bah.

Hobbled by a multiplicity of narrative lines and superfluous, often stereotypical characters, the movie suffers from a lack of both focus and passion.

Unlike the ronin, the heroes of a Japanese legend, these guys are still searching for a story.

Like last winter's "Pleasantville," this movie juxtaposes classic virtues against modern mores. The former did so with far more invention.

A faithful adaptation of Craig Lucas's popular play, it proves a feast for love gourmands, especially those with an appetite for body-swapping. The less starry-eyed viewers -- and probably the hard-working leads Meg Ryan and Alec Baldwin -- will remain starved for the comparative profundity of a leaky "Love Boat" rerun.

The sequel ought to pacify fans of the original. A predictable mix of farce and sentiment, pleasantly paced by director Emile Ardolino, the story is not in the least demanding.

Old-fashioned Hollywood filmmaking at its best .

Sweetly dopey, kid-friendly, if overly contrived comedy.

The performers all seem to be relishing this sendup, but we're always aware that it is a vehicle better suited to the stage. In trying to open it up some for the screen, Bogdanovich and scriptwriter Marty Kaplan have presented the original play as a series of flashbacks that come upon Caine as he sweats out the play's Broadway opening. All this does is slow the opening and delay the close.

Most of the humor is sophisticated slapstick, which Depardieu mastered in the hilarious trio of Francis Veber comedies he did with Pierre Richard in the '80s.

It's the Hardy Boys as id busters, an entertaining though mightily flawed scalp-tingler with a few too many magic moments: shooting stars and star-splashed skies and glittery ectoplasmic motes and ghosts that fly on strings.

Kloves has taken us on one more ride down this same old Texas highway, with its cheap motels and gloomy cowboys. Ain't much more to it than that.