Robert Wilonsky

One can only assume all the, ah, good stuff landed on the cutting-room floor, because it sure as hell didn't make it to Mars.

Which leaves Witherspoon, that delicious pastry, to heave the movie on her small shoulders and carry it home. The load is light -- the movie weighs no more than a glass of flat champagne -- but even she can't withstand the burden.

It's barely a movie at all, more like a thousand car commercials spliced together in an hour.

Final is one big hunh? barely worth the effort; just because it doesn't make any sense doesn't mean it's art.

To damn Herbie: Fully Loaded as soporific crap, as lazy profiteering, as yet another needless and cynical remake in a season populated by such con artists, would be as pointless as the movie itself.

Russell, a former student of Buddhist monk-philosopher Robert Thurman's, is reaching too far, straining too hard, saying too much that adds up to so little after all the mumbos and jumbos tallied up by film's end.

Has all the charm of a canceled CBS sitcom.

The most overrated movie of the year (of all time?) by people who should know better.

Banal sit-comedy masquerading as religious deepthink dolled up as boy-meets-goy love story.

Any goy, too, can fall for this tripe, especially if they've a fondness for mawkish cliché, sitcom pacing, popcorn psychology, and lousy cinematography.

Feels like a quirky sitcom -- "Arrested Development" without the development.

A muddle—not amiably ambling, not affably shaggy, just a mess that gets messier till, at times, the whole thing looks improvised by amateurs more concerned with being clever than something resembling affectionate.

Its heart is in the right place, but it has no soul.

You're almost tempted to laugh at Birth by the end, but by then you're too busy cursing it to bother.

Among the several iterations of Jules Verne's novel about the inventor's adventures whilst traipsing through England, Asia and the Wild West, this new one is the least impressive and most depressive. Even the 1989 made-for-TV version starring Pierce Brosnan possessed more spark and steam than this lazy, lackluster take.

Like a half-remembered dream, the movie's often so overwhelming that even its dull, dead moments (of which there are many, unfortunately) leave you wondering what you're missing and what you've just forgotten.

Cornier than the cornfields spread out in front of the dilapidated rural Texas manse inhabited by Robert Duvall and Michael Caine, playing grumpy old brothers with mismatched accents.

It's chatty when it wants to pretend it's deep and spiritual, messy when it's striving for chaotic and thrilling, and boring when it has no other options left.

Yes, the "Taxi Driver" parallels are intentional: Hill spells them out in the press notes, all but branding Observe and Report a Scorsesefied remake that reeks of stale Cinnabon.

It's utterly frustrating: What could and should have been biting and droll is instead a tepid waste of time and talent.

It's as light on its feet as a dead elephant. It's never clever or smart, nor is it terribly thrilling or engaging during its numerous fight sequences.

Should make about $750, which is how much they need to save the farm, but a little less than Disney CEO Michael Eisner needs to save his job.

Paycheck is a terribly muddled mess, a Hitchcock homage (with generous, obvious nods to The Birds, Strangers on a Train and North by Northwest) by a great filmmaker trying to say a great deal with so very little.

So convoluted and half-assed it's tempting to dismiss it as unfinished; it feels like six different movies cut together by a blind editor.

It has but one thing going for it: a cast filled with Oscar nominees.

Renders it a cross between "Three Men and a Baby" and "Monsters, Inc." But it's bereft of the charisma of the former and the energy of the latter; stuck in a frozen wasteland, it possesses all the vigor of a Popsicle.

Plays like something Dr. Phil and "Sex and the City's" Carrie Bradshaw might have written during a commercial break, a feel-good fantasy that sounds deep but has no more depth than a kiddie pool drained for winter.

Turns out some folks just don't know Philip K. Dick about making movies.

Adequately breezy and sleazy -- a movie about the horniest man in the universe looking for a little one-night stand.

It's time to run, screaming.

Its execution is stultifying, laughable and ultimately a little offensive.

Nothing happens. At all. Ever. Remember when Steve Martin was funny? Apparently, neither does he.

It's easily the ugliest film Gilliam's ever made, a movie shot with a lens someone forgot to wipe. It's also his loudest: Every scene is amped up to 11, and every line of dialogue is delivered as though it's a cry for help from the bottom of the well.

The movie, which feels as amateurish as a student film made for cable access, doesn't deliver the goods; the gotcha moment never comes.

Succeeds in scaring you and boring you at the same time; unlike Moore's movie, it's agitprop bereft of artistry, porn for Republicans.

Obnoxiously dull.

Andrew Litvack, whose inability to direct is outweighed only by his inability to write anything remotely witty, enlightening, or engaging. Calling this a farce would be, well, a farce.

Singleton's version is cynical and silly--one long set-up to a closing scene that promises, or threatens, a sequel.

Who wants to pay to see a movie so bad the actors and writer-director feel the need to keep reminding us of how bad it is?

This pallid little ditty, like the rest of Lance Bass and pals' oeuvre, is soulless, banal and derivative.

When the movie's not playing stupid, it's aiming for sickly sweet sincerity. It's such a jarring and inevitably juvenile juxtaposition it comes off like a Hallmark card parody written by the staffers at "Cracked."

Obnoxious, transparent cornball comedy.

Deafeningly dull movie.

A film built upon transitions so weak and obvious it's astonishing the entire thing doesn't collapse on itself.

Every movie Dugan releases looks like something made on accident--tosses yet another stink bomb into theaters for audiences to sniff over.

Full of conspiracies, all The Skulls lacks is a brain.

The film has no form or function; at best, it's a 90-minute infomercial.

Instead of satire, we're treated to diarrhea jokes, dogs dangled from the windows of speeding SUVs and tasteless sobriquets bestowed upon anyone who looks vaguely ethnic.

A movie that leaves you wondering what the fuss was all about when its end credits appear; it's a mish-mash of a dozen other, better films ground up and watered down--Seven, Silence of the Lambs, and Manhunter, to name a few of the usual suspects.

Proof of Life kidnaps the audience, then tortures it to a slow death

This limp gender-bender-baller from a first-time director and rookie screenwriter steals wholesale from that 1982's "Tootsie," forgetting only to retain a single laugh.

This ain't no movie. It's a very long, very tedious infomercial for Phantom Menace action figures, on sale now at a Target or Toys "R" Us near you.

An ambitious, frustrating drag.

It's a self-satisfied, self-loathing mess that demands you adore and cheer for the very person you come to hate well before its 105 minutes are up. Little Black Book will leave you feeling skuzzy.

Feels like an in-joke, a party where everyone on the screen's having a better time than anyone in the theater, and they all couldn't care less. And that's just no fun at all.

Disappointing only because its best moments are transcendent; its worst moments, sadly, are just so ordinary.

It punishes rather than entertains; it condescends, it offends, it loathes its audience.

If this it supposed to be comedy, why isn't it ever, for one second, funny?

September Tapes, with its torturously high-minded narration and ludicrously low-road shenanigans, uses the terror attacks of 2001 as the setup for an infuriating gotcha finale.

One presumes the only thing worse than making this disaster is actually watching it; wouldn't wish either on anyone.

Bernal can't decide if he's making a Tarantino homage or an Almodovar riff or an Albert Brooks tribute...and the wobbly sensibility finally knocks the movie's legs out from beneath it altogether.

Freedomland manages a seemingly impossible feat: It's both turgid AND overwrought, eliciting the shriek that fades into a yawn without anyone ever noticing. It's a wholly dreary piece of work.

The Punisher would be almost offensive were it not so inconsequential. There's just something terribly off-putting about a movie in which every gruesome death is a punch line, where a villain's homosexuality is used to lure him to his death and dozens of innocents are gunned down just to launch a film franchise.

The X-Men franchise takes a giant leap backward and off a cliff with its fourth offering.

Bearable only because, unlike the recent spate of teen films, it's so breezy it barely even registers.

Really, what women want is what all of us want: a decent movie, something vaguely insightful and occasionally funny. This isn't that movie.

The most offensive movie of the year.

An utter drag, a tepid and sterilized telling of Susann's life.

It wears out its welcome well before its halfway point, by which time you're either so tangled up in plot points you're strangling, or so bored you just wish you were being strangled.

Travolta is stuck giving a remarkable performance in a film so trivial and offensive its mere existence is as loathsome as it is laughable.

It's too easy, but here goes: This movie's a Loser. Sorry.

The only thing worse than second-generation Guy Ritchie is fourth-generation Quentin Tarantino, and this movie has the musty smell of 1995 all over it.

Aspires to be a "Beach Blanket Bingo" redux with a gangbang Grease finale, but it plays like junior high Neil LaBute filmed by an elementary school AV squad.

There's nothing more enervating than a stupid film with only random, and perhaps accidental, flashes of smarts; the rare prescient moments only serve to highlight how banal and vacant the rest of the movie is, especially when it stoops to conquer the gross-out market bled dry by the Farrelly Brothers and their myriad acolytes.

Isn't any fun at all, which is ultimately the most damning thing you can say about a Bruckheimer movie.

So utterly awful, you're tempted to build a time machine, then go back in history and try to make sure Ward's parents never meet.

It's too bad, then, that Anderson (whose only other major credit is "Mortal Kombat," but of course) and first-time screenwriter Philip Eisner felt so compelled to do away with suspense and turn Event Horizon into a big-budget slasher film.

The entire enterprise was directed by first-timer Christopher Erskin like a would-be Max Bialystock; one can only assume it's supposed to be this bad, because nobody sucks this hard on accident.

Deadly dull thriller.

Stay away: Everything about the movie is rinky-dink, from its phony, lifeless dialogue to its drab, shabby sitcom look to its choppy editing, all of which can wear on you after 95 minutes that come to feel like an eternity.

The movie's all flash and formula, as original as the letter A, especially when it collapses in a dung heap of gunfire and corpses.

It will linger like a foul odor or the taste of tinfoil between the teeth.

An antiadvertisement for itself.

A stunning piece of work--stunningly inept, stunningly incoherent, stunningly awful in every single way imaginable.

Welcome to Mooseport... is intended to be a comedy; that hypothesis is a generous leap of faith, given the fact that "House of Sand and Fog" contains more moments of mirth than this rather joyless exercise in waste and torpor.

A football film made by a man who apparently has seen little of the game outside of movies, and not very good ones at that.

It's absolutely awful, and even Gene Hackman can't carry it across the goal line.

Were it not for the involvement of producer Bruckheimer, who has made billions by conning millions into believing they can't live without his celluloid crack, it's doubtful Kangaroo Jack would even exist. As it stands now, the "movie" barely exists anyway.

The movie's so unfunny, it almost appears to be that way on purpose, kind of like an Ingmar Bergman film.

Indeed, this is the very kind of lame-brained folly Levy and his SCTV cohorts used to mock on their old show; now it's how he makes rent.

It's an exceptionally dreary and overwrought bit of work, every bit as imperious as Katzenberg's "The Prince of Egypt" from 1998.

A film bereft of emotion, characters and words with more than two syllables.

So awful it's hypnotizing.

Penned by Rock and a handful of his pals, is such an utter disaster it seems to go out of its way to avoid comedy. It's the very definition of oxymoron: a crowd-pleaser that doesn't.

As the year stumbles toward its conclusion and critics begin penning their best-and-worst compendiums, here's a holiday contender fit for the all-time Naughty List.

A whole lot of something about nothing.

In one of the year's most woefully manipulative and oppressively pandering offerings: I Am Sam, a dolled-up TV movie-of-the-week masquerading as profound cinema.

A spastic, indecipherable, unholy, and altogether unwatchable mess.