Robert Wilonsky

Certainly it exists solely to sell a soundtrack; the movie, like most made for teens, is well beside the point.

It's a plot more worn out than the tinsel boxed up in the attic. In the end, they've given us a Christmas gift barely worth returning.

I liked when they had the paint fights and the pillow fights.

Crowe renders David's dream (and its accompanying nightmare) so literal we can't help but leave the theater feeling as though we've been lectured to, told how to feel and what to think. And for an audience, that's a bit of a nightmare.

This film about sex is so joyless, so astonishingly unsexy, it's like watching porn with your grandfather going tsk-tsk-tsk over your shoulder for two hours.

In the end, The Apostle feels like a con, a movie that embraces its contradictions only because it's not smart enough to reconcile them; everything feels complex, but, in fact, it's far too simple.

A comic-book movie unashamed of its roots, meaning it's unabashed about being silly, overwrought nonsense, which works to its benefit--so much so that you're almost rooting for it by the end.

The movie comes off as willfully eccentric when it should have been charmingly touching.

It may have been the perfect storm, but this is the imperfect movie.

It's just a familiar bore, offering chills and thrills only to those who have never seen a movie before.

Either a put-on or a straight shooter; that you can't tell the difference underscores its small but ultimately overwhelming flaws.

It's far more than merely disappointing that Spy Kids 2: The Island of Lost Dreams lacks the charm and wit -- and humanity --of its predecessor. It's dispiriting.

Not good enough to overcome its status as damaged goods, which is almost a shame, since audiences will miss Billy Bob Thornton's best performance, and hairpiece, in years.

Leguizamo is all twitches and spasms; there's not a bit of subtlety in his high-wire performance. By the time you get past it, the film bogs down in dime-store potboiling.

Smith used to make movies to make fun of movies like Jersey Girl; now he's just another guy working the assembly line, which won't make you a sell-out if no one buys it.

Never quite works, despite the wonderful performances or the decency in the screenplay's margins.

The 3D, effective but not yet totally awesome, masks a world of sins: Ghosts can be an awfully tedious voyage-to-the-bottom-of-the-sea.

The droll has been made dull, a most inexplicable and unfortunate turn of events for so adored a genius, goofball work as this.

No one is more blameworthy than Witherspoon...With her newfound clout and charm, she could make better films; instead, she strolls up to the audience standing in line at the ATM and demands we fork it over or else.

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.