Robert Wilonsky

The film desperately wants to play like "Three Kings," a war film with a guilty conscience, but it's too pat and familiar to earn its high-minded stripes.

To say it's better than it has any right to be gives the original too much credit and the remake not enough.

That's not to say Simone doesn't offer a good time. Shove aside its self-righteous agenda and it's a deft kick, a light comedy whenever it's not trying to play heavy. And it's bolstered by Al Pacino in a lively performance.

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.

If only Condon kept up the Q&A format, because when he ditches it the movie turns flat and familiar.

This film is no "Usual Suspects," because there is no twist, no gotcha.

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.

Ultimately, Hart's War can't decide what it is: treatise on racism, escape (and escapist) thriller or murder mystery. So it sits there -- and we sit there with it, waiting and waiting. And waiting.

Little more than direct-to-vid nonsense offered by Disney at dollars on the penny to parents looking to waste time and money keeping kids occupied away from the TV screen.

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

It has its moments, but they never add up to a record you'd want to play again and again in its entirety.

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

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

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

All Sinbad has going for it is Pfeiffer's Eris.

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

Wacky chaos ensues, as the film veers toward a subplot about industrial espionage, but director Clare Kilner's debut is never as daft as it should have been.

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.

Morrow the actor tries too -- but he's a stylish director with a steady hand and a shaky eye (the scenes from Lyle's tortured point of view are dazzling, if not a bit unsettling). It'd make one hell of a TV movie.

Once more, Tim Allen drops a lump of coal down the chimney.

It strains to be funny where the original's gags were efficiently deadpan, yet it's also so unbearably lazy, stooping to cliché and caricature when it backs itself into the shower.

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

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

It's stunning, really, to consider how much time and expense went into something so chintzy and dull--a script full of non sequiturs shouted by a screen full of chum.

An antiadvertisement for itself.

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

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.

Runs out of breath and collapses into a heap of feel-good endings that turn a soaring feeling into a sinking one. But by then, the audience that adores it will forgive it its sins.