Sean Axmaker

It's hard to believe that five different writers took credit for this feeble story and script. Who says failure is an orphan?

The slapdash comic flailing of screenwriter and TV scribe-turned-director Ed Decter is only compounded by a script so disconnected you have to wonder if pages were lost on the way to the set.

The disingenuous attempt to give the tawdry story some kind of social import only makes the tinny caricatures more insincere, while his erotic display of 15-year-old girls isn't a satire of a sexualized culture, it's just dirty.

An airless, mannered mess.

Welcome to the tawdry end of paradise, where no melodrama is too obvious and no conflict too contrived.

Makes no effort to learn about the culture. It idolizes the idea of spiritual purity without offering any insight into what it really means.

A potentially interesting idea deflated by the absurd proclamations of an arch screenplay and smothered under the ponderous gravity of M. Night Shyamalan's dreary direction.

But as an artist, von Trier's contempt for humanity is becoming harder to hide with stylistic flourish. He doesn't even try here, and his arrogance is topped only by his misanthropy.

There's no slow descent into ruthless warfare and we get neither the giddy charge of their bad behavior, nor the guilty sting of complicity in their ruthless desire. All that's left is an idea still in search of a script.

All that's left are cute animals with animated mouths spitting out fitfully inspired one liners, sophomoric sexual innuendo and enough poop gags to last a lifetime.

Favors giggly juvenile humor over inspired satire and ends up not with a moral, but a moral vacuum.

The most insipidly innocuous film ever made about facing mortality and living it up before passing away, The Bucket List has as much poetry and poise as its clumsy, clunky title.

Overlong, unscary, poorly paced and banally written.

Has all the telltale signs of desperate re-editing: mismatched shots, clumsy transitions and a devastating car wreck that occurred either on a dry sunlit day or in the midst of a nighttime downpour, depending on the flashback.

While too bland and stupid to be offensive, Never Back Down spouts a hollow message of nonviolence while celebrating the brutal satisfaction of beating the crap out of someone.

Dracula, who, as played by Dominic Purcell, has all the dark charisma and burning threat of a baked potato.

Who is Cletis Tout? Who cares?

Not just a bad film, Hannibal Rising is downright dull, which is a far worse crime.

I'd be tempted to call the whole thing cartoonish, but that would be insulting to the real thing.

The psychobabble silliness passed off as investigative insight here is laughable at best.

Not faithful enough to be an adaptation, too misguided to be considered an interpretation, and not funny enough to be a parody, this film would do well not to advertise its inspiration.

Isn't merely bad, it's utterly flavorless and the filmmakers are either too lazy or too cynical to even pretend there's a story behind Lawrence's 21st century homeboy shtick in 14th-century garb.

It's phony and forced, but mostly it's just silly. If there was once a satirical edge to this thriller, it's been programmed right out.

The utter lack of tension or suspense is as dumbfounding as Hunt's blender approach to editing, which purees action scenes into incoherent mashes of image confetti.

There is no stylistic thrill to this blunt object of a callous action film. It's content to bludgeon the audience into numb resignation.

Ultimately this soppy Pacifier sucks.

Yet another raunchy, gross-out farce, this one about smart-alecky city boys who have wacky adventures while exposing themselves in -- I mean to -- the great outdoors.

Tired and glib, it tries to milk humor from the sniping, sass and simple disrespect of its unpleasant traveling companions.