Sean Axmaker

Burns' trite talk and familiar romantic conflicts doesn't do any of the characters any favors. Everyone comes off flat and forced, with one notable and lovely exception: Dawson.

The film is a shapeless mess and about as convincing as a cartoon, the usual mix of slapstick, doofus humor and raunchy sex jokes lacking even the bite or attitude to make it adventurous.

This vampire story is as soulless as they get.

The result of this blender mash of exotic horror isn't much of anything at all, neither suspenseful, terrifying or inventively gory: Turistas is dead on arrival.

All processed sugar and artificial flavor, right down to the sticky but tasteless happy ending.

At its best when exploring grieving and loss and anger, but Shear turns it into spiritual shock treatment.

Takes itself seriously enough to pull off a clever bit of sleight of hand, but doesn't have much to offer once the twist comes out of hiding.

All the jazzy effects and jumpy editing merely move us quicker to an otherwise predetermined tragedy.

Loses focus of whom the film is honoring.

The resulting hodgepodge has the feel of filmmaking by committee, the look of last-minute reshoots and the whiff of desperation. Not even Braff's cartoonish smirk is distracting enough to hide that.

It wants to be a "Carrie" with a modern-day "Frankenstein" twist, but it lacks the smarts behind the weirdness.

Neither clever nor heartwarming, Four Christmases is the coal in the stocking of holiday movies.

It all feels pretty empty.

Director Jean Stewart isn't merely clumsy with character; she hasn't the chops to show us the joy and exhilaration Christine feels in the freedom of solo runs.

I can imagine the pitch meeting: "It's 'Kramer vs. Kramer' meets 'Forrest Gump.' No, wait, 'Rainman' has a baby!"

It might be impressive as a made-for-DVD production, but coming from producer George Lucas, it makes for a cheap excuse for a big-screen spectacle.

Too bad Igor didn't jolt the film to life with his Frankenstein shenanigans.

The film half-heartedly paints their actions as rebel-chic heroism even when it has all the integrity of tomcats spraying outside their yards, and it ends up just as confused as the characters.

The special effects display is so lacking in imagination it turns into so much noise, just a flashy distraction from the stiff, stock cliches of the by-the-numbers script.

At its best, it is self-effacing fun.But the cartoonish approach takes its toll: The random twists and contrived showdowns devolve into just so much abstract business, too silly to take seriously and too unmotivated to make sense.

A harried, screechy film that goes nowhere at a breakneck pace, full of sound and furious slapstick overkill but devoid of wit.

Time travelers, hobbits, ghosts? Those I can buy. The impossibly quaint world of small-town innocence and Hollywood harmlessness in Win a Date With Tad Hamilton? Now that demands a serious suspension of disbelief.

There's every reason to believe the creators stopped taking it seriously a long time ago. What's bothersome is that they don't take the audience seriously enough to deliver an actual movie.

Like too many films of faith, it mixes its message, proclaiming that a life given over to God is a reward unto itself, and then handing over victories to its faithful like some overtime bonus.

For all the hot air expended, this film ends up all smoke and no heat.

Not extreme enough to skate the edge of tasteless farce and not straight enough to play the material for edgy satire, The Ringer is a cheat right down to the final stretch. Breaking the rules should be more fun than this.

For all the bludgeoning insistence of Kramer's contrived plots and blunt direction, there's not much conviction to the outrage.

Don't watch this film unless you have a high tolerance and an undemanding appreciation for penis jokes and humor based more on a capacity to disgust than to surprise.

A stiff of a supernatural comedy.

The official R rating is for "strong language, sexual content, drug use and some crude humor," but the MPAA is just being polite. It's all crude.

The few genuine moments of connection -- are as refreshing as they are out of place. They only highlight how false and affected the rest of the film is.

Plays like a feature-length sitcom with gay double entendres.

More than painful to behold, it's simply insincere in a film determined to undermine gay stereotypes.

Von Trier is far more hypocritical than his straw-figure characters, and he's simply too cynical and insincere to be provocative.

A sloppy, indifferent action movie with a sadistic edge and a sour hypocrisy.

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.

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.

Overlong, unscary, poorly paced and banally written.

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.

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

Ultimately this soppy Pacifier sucks.

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.

Stephen Brill's flat-footed script begins as an idiot comedy with the gross-out gags of a Farrelly brothers film.

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.

Coupled with the flavorless dialogue of the inane script and a leading man who registers all the glow of a black hole, there's nothing to anchor this mindless mess of a film.

This isn't a movie, it's a marketing ploy. Would you like a plush Garfield toy with that popcorn?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

It's bad enough that the lazy script substitutes goofy situations for actual gags, much of which falls flat under Rob Pritts' plodding direction, but Corky Romano finally sours in cynicism and hypocrisy.

Glib, sense-numbing action fantasy.

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

The humorless and self-important execution attempts an operatic scale but only succeeds in sinking the remnants of the story's integrity. By the time it makes landfall, this incoherent production has blown itself out.

There is no histrionic excess or crackpot camp, only hoary sentiment, the puppy-dog cuteness of the mentally handicapped, and the proposition that the "cure" for lesbianism is one good man brave enough to get in touch with his inner cow.

The script drowns out its ideas with arch melodramatic devices and ridiculous twists while Babbitt smothers even the daylight scenes in an oppressive gloom.

Redfield's fans will rejoice, if only to see the beloved novel illustrated on the screen, no matter how tediously. The rest of us probably should stay away.

A girlie romantic comedy with tired slapstick pranks but not an ounce of self-respect or intelligence.

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.

Who is Cletis Tout? Who cares?

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

The roll call of perversions and adolescent sex gags are more creepy than kooky and the sudden shift to triumphant romantic sincerity at the climax rings as false as this film's sappy (sorry, happy) ending.

Call this one "Die Hard" on Alcatraz, and this time the "cuckoo crazy" maverick has got the homeboys on his side.

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.

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

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

An airless, mannered mess.

As stiff and slogging as animated films come.

Sour slapstick assault with a tin heart and counterfeit sentimentality.

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

Upbeat but generic songs (one performed by Little Richard) and jazz lines add a little energy but the film feels less like a feature than an expensive ad for the upcoming video.

A one-joke, one-note turkey.

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

Afraid to pitch into farce, yet only half-hearted in its spy mechanics, All the Queen's Men is finally just one long drag.

It's so sloppy that the flashback montage includes clips from scenes that were cut from the film!

Levant turns up the slapstick, doubletakes, and epic fart jokes to a tortured extreme.

It's a shrill cacophony of puerile clichés about men and women and sex, delivered in adrenaline-driven harangues and arrogant lectures. When the stage clears, all that's left is the unpleasant odor of all that hot air.

No style, no irony and no smarts, just a vicious streak that lasts 90 minutes.

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.

Less offensive than embarrassing, at least for the chagrined performers.

It's recidivist Murphy: bad-skit comedy populated by caricatures in search of a movie.

Not that there are any actual jokes to be had. The film simply jumps to the punch lines, a non-stop barrage of crude dialogue and vulgar sight gags that passes as humor among adolescent boys. Who exactly is the audience for this R-rated film? The terminally immature?

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