Rita Kempley

A deliciously mordant French spine-tingler.

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.

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]

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

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.

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

It is a triumph for director Ron Howard, underwater photographer Jordan Klein, the writers and even the guy who made Hannah's latex tail (Robert Short). And it's surely the stairway to superstardom for costar John Candy and the lovely leading nyad. Splash, a departure for struggling Disney Studio, is as irresistible as the siren's song. [09 Mar 1984, p.23]

Yaphet Kotto, as L.A.P.D. Detective Harry Lowes, and Larry Hankin, as his partner, pull the bench out from under the rest of the players. Show-stealing is their only crime -- they add the necessary guts and good humor to bring the Star Chamber down to earth. [5 Aug 1983, p.17]

It's rambunctiously entertaining, a loop-de-loopy bumper car ride through a firecracker sky, all bright lights, sonic booms and impossible heroics.

In Burton's hands, Washington Irving's spooky classic is reincarnated as an overripe, grisly Goth cartoon.

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 overplotted but predictable thriller "White Sands." Written by the same guy who tried to scare Harry Homeowner silly with "Pacific Heights," it's got all the ingredients, though none of the gumption, of a good adventure. It's suspiciously trendy.

Kermit, who takes to the role of Smollet like a grunion to running, is commanding, but it is Piggy as Smollet's castaway flame who puts much-needed wind into the movie's luffing sails. Clad in a muumuu and clamshells, she sets Kermit's timbers a-shivering as in the old days. Their love for each other—like America's love for Muppets—is simply unsinkable.

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]

You can hear the silence, the palpable quiet in director Randa Haines' skillful adaptation of stage's "Children of a Lesser God." The polemic drama of deaf rights translates into a heart-pounding love story -- the most passionately performed since "Officer and a Gentleman."

Like the director, the cast seems to have burrowed into the material, made all the more wrenchingly realistic by Dogme precepts.

Profoundly affecting.

A noisy, impenetrable and totally nonsensical cogitation on the nature of firefighters and the sizzling "animal" they love...We just wish somebody would call 911 for boredom.

The picture seems muted, the flower's petals a little brown at the edges.

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.

While the plot is thin and there's little action till the big blow some 60 minutes into the film, a volcano offers a greater variety of thrills than your basic cyclone ever could.

Bad movies have a way of writing their own epitaphs.

Writer-director Stephan Elliott is obviously fond of his characters, and this may account for the upbeat story line, but it blinds him to how very annoying two hours of dishing can be.

Director Harold Ramis, who managed to stop time in the sunny comic masterpiece "Groundhog Day," tries a different tack in this lesser though nonetheless hilarious caper.

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

This first film from Sesame Street is this summer's sweetest surprise, a wholly good-natured children's comedy with enough wit and whimsy left over to win parents' hearts, too. Like the TV series, it's not violent, not threatening and not to be missed. [02 Aug 1985, p.23]