Rita Kempley

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]

Nair and screenwriter Sooni Taraporevala aren't really great storytellers, but they are streetwise. Shot on a low budget, down and dirty and on location, "Salaam Bombay!" is like being there, if there is where you want to be.

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

Vincent Patrick, author of the best-selling novel, wrote the screenplay that gives the actors, including the superb Geraldine Page, plenty to run with. It just never gets them anywhere.

Broadway Danny Rose mixes the old, bitter Allen with the new, mellowed Allen, still a great comedy writer and comedian but now a better story-teller and better actor. He seems to plan films in orderly progressions, so they'll fit right into retrospectives without any shuffling. [27 Jan 1984, p.19]

British writer-director Bruce Robinson, who won kudos for his screenplay "The Killing Fields" and his novel adaptation "Withnail & I" doesn't have a clue when it comes to this populist genre. What he has are cliches.

Hoskins and costar Cathy Tyson of the Royal Shakespeare Company are an electric couple, with their disparate colors and shapes. She's class; he's crass. Their turbulent teamwork is augmented with sure supporting performances by Michael Caine, as the flesh-peddling villain Mortwell; and British comedian Robbie Coltrane, as George's teddy bear of a best friend, Thomas. [18 July 1986, p.31]

Only cognoscenti of things wet and wild could conceivably enjoy this B movie about an Arizona wave pool champion who comes of age by riding on water.

Hinton was still a Tulsa teen when she wrote the best seller (4 million copies in seven languages) in the mid-1960s. Her brain wasn't mucked up with adult equivocation, so she didn't get into those confusing gray zones. Great for her, but not for Coppola, who turns this long-awaited story into baffling mush.

A big, fat clunker.

It's a deliciously dishy comedy, but like sushi an acquired taste.

Hopkins and Thompson's downright marvelous duet is supported by a host of deft players, and the detailed re-creation of this small universe is in all ways remarkable.

There are some scenes that rival any in recent memory -- Winger and Hannah escaping a flaming finale in a burning gallery and Winger and Redford escaping an exploding warehouse -- but the whole is less than its parts, a little too careful. Kind of like dinner theater.

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 slight, disingenuous script that robs the characters of their histories.

It spins its wheels in a giddy sort of way, then puts the pedal to the mettle, lays rubber and fairly takes wing.

Sparse and implausible screenplay.

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]

Target isn't a suspenseful spy movie, but it makes up for its shortcomings with its genuine good- heartedness.

About as understated as a 21-gun salute... What's missing is anything of Reiner himself.

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.)

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.

As for Billy Bob, they all steal the money, but he steals the show.

Director Kevin Rodney Sullivan, a television veteran making his feature film debut, has fluffed up this undemanding material much as one would a pillow. But pillows have their place and so do girlfriend movies.

There are laughs -- lots of them, too -- but at some point the source of the laughs -- Vaughan's Ricky, a yammering loose cannon -- goes from entertaining to obnoxious.