Steve Davis

Movies like The Vatican Tapes are by nature sloppy and derivative, seeking to evoke a thrill that’s long gone.

Although the scares in this movie are minimal, Ernest Scared Stupid nonetheless offers the frightening prospect of yet another installment of the Big E's misguided antics.

With the exception of the handful of scenes in which the Flubber does its stuff, however, the youngsters will no doubt be bored by it all.

The script is replete with filler inserted in the name of “real life”: bad jokes and silly riddles, spontaneous songs, and improvised scenes in which conversations go around in circles.

Certain scenes play as if Reiner forgot to show up on the day of filming, so the actors and cameraman just winged it. Perhaps his embarrassing (and pointless) turn as Leah’s clueless accompanist with the bad toupee distracted him from his principal responsibilities behind the camera. What a Meathead.

Ultimately, one has to chalk up The Pink Panther to the good old traditions of Hollywood greed and chutzpah. Nothing this slapdash and badly executed is done for the love of movies.

A welcome antidote to most of the crap that for passes today for horror and other supernaturally themed movies.

With the exception of Kroll’s gravelly-intoned Uncle Fester, the voicework is sketchy, with Theron’s Seven-Sisters elocution bordering on sacrilege.

Noble intentions, ignoble results.

Admittedly, the original had its unruly moments, but there’s little to no discipline here. The storyline goes in six different directions, and the actors are unleashed in an apparent free-for-all as they vie for center stage at the Parthenon.

The lengths to which a parent will go to save a child can be gut-wrenching stuff, but Waist Deep rarely hits you in the pit of your stomach. Blame it on the lame screenplay, which unwisely (and badly) gravitates more toward the crime-spree elements of "Bonnie and Clyde" than the fierce parental instincts of, say, "Kramer vs. Kramer" or "Lorenzo's Oil."

If Tuff Turf had used a little more of Downey's relaxed intelligence and amiability, and a little less teenage angst and sense of violence as retribution, it might have been tough stuff. As it is, it's a lightweight in a genre populated with featherweights.

The borderline campy The Bye Bye Man is a horror movie in search of an urban legend. Based on a chapter in the 2005 collection of allegedly strange-but-true paranormal tales "The President’s Vampire," the premise is second-rate Stephen King.

Frankenheimer resorts to gunfire and explosions to bring the film to its predictable end. It's when things get mundane that you find yourself wishing that Brando would reappear on the screen to make things interesting again.

What hath "The Sixth Sense" wrought? These days, it seems as if every psychological thriller has a surprise finish.

Ladybugs is a clapboard of a movie, but it's a genial, harmless one. The misfit antics of the soccer games are good for a few laughs, although Michael Ritchie's 1976 film The Bad News Bears is far superior in that area of comedy. Regardless, when you find yourself ashamedly laughing at Ladybugs, remember that comedy was never meant to be politically correct.

Any adult attending this film with a pre-K offspring may need to reassure the child afterward that little Tigger back home won’t devour him in his sleep. No kidding. They’re that scary. The Wild Life is an ailurophobe’s nightmare.

Neither a badly miscast Cage nor an oddly dispassionate Cruz remotely suggest the ardor of love's passion.

The best bit, however, is not even in the movie, but in the film’s end credits: an expletive-filled parody of We Are the World in which a host of has-beens croon about their halcyon days as child stars.

Osmond is all teeth and no talent. You’d think that his presence here might provide an opportunity for some tongue-in-cheek humor at his expense, but Osmond plays the comedy so darn straight that it’s painful to watch.

As the robotic duo, Lundgren and Van Damme have found roles tailored to their acting abilities.

In its laziest moments, MBFGW3, like the 2016 sequel preceding it, dutifully plays these greatest hits on repeat to reassure its loyal core audience it hasn’t abandoned the memory of the first film, even at the risk of demonstrating its creative bankruptcy.

Predictable but never coy about it, After Words speaks to the fateful connection that sometimes occurs between two people under the most improbable circumstances.

The improbabilities pile up on top of each other in Mrs. Winterbourne, an anxious-to-please romantic comedy about mistaken identity that sounds vaguely familiar.

As forgettable as a puff off a generic-brand butt: filtered, flavored, and ultimately unsatisfying.

It is truly one of the year's dumbest movies.

It’s meant to be thrilling fun, but it never takes off in the way imagined.

The snap of a twig, the rustle of a branch – that’s about as scary as it gets in The Forest, a supernatural horror movie afraid of its own shadow.

The ho-hum practical jokes the two inflict upon the other can be described as Home Alone lite: No concussion-inducing swinging paint cans or burn-inducing doorknobs inspired by Looney Tunes violence here. Which, of course, takes all the fun out of it.

Does the world need another movie about a bunch of miniature, blue-skinned humanoids with bulbous noses and perky bobtails; gnomelike creatures who wear floppy caps, live in mushrooms, and use the word “smurf” in every other sentence? Someone apparently thinks so.

The movie is as lifeless as a mannequin until Ferrell appears near the end as the absurdly coiffed villain Jacobim Mugatu.

The too-too-precious title flashes like a cautionary traffic sign. Warning: Pretentiousness and Pedantry Ahead.

Director/screenwriter Giarratana occasionally summons up a lovely moment, although the overall tone is inconsistent.

Given the likely reception to this movie, it’s unlikely there will be a sixth wave anytime soon.

Aside from the committee-written script with no coherent perspective, the trouble with Like a Boss is that it never crudely outrages. It’s a bust in so many ways. The halfhearted gender and cultural political incorrectness of Hayek’s ridiculous character makes for halfhearted laughs, and that’s being generous.

To its credit, this third GND installment earnestly attempts to give some degree of lip service to diverging perspectives on the socio-religious-political scale without too much proselytizing, although there’s never any question about who’s side it’s on.

Still, The Ex is more appealing and less dumb than most movies that pass as comedy today, so any criticisms of its shortcomings need to account for that big-picture perspective. Indeed, there are worse ways to spend an hour-and-a-half.

You could drive an 18-wheeler through the substantial number of plot holes in Paranoia.

It appears that this franchise has hit a dead end, running on nothing but fumes.

The fishy smell that permeates Perfect Stranger comes from all of the red herrings flopping around this absurdly plotted Hollywood thriller.

Stupefyingly inane buddy-cop comedy.

Whether you view it as intellectually dishonest or just plain sloppy, Deception is a movie that more than lives up to its title.

This is one movie best left unattached.

Interminably unfunny, this holiday offering about how the three Firpo brothers learn the true meaning of Christmas from the inhabitants of the quaint small town whose bank they've robbed is something of a crime itself.

It’s a frustrating thing to unsnarl. Straddling the thorny fence of dramedy, Love the Coopers is a sometimes too serious, often not funny entry in this year’s tra-la-la movie sweepstakes.

Nothing in the film remotely resembles any location between San Antonio and Dallas, the beginning and end points of its labored trajectory. For someone in Fresno or Akron, this may not be a big deal, but for those of us in these here parts, it’s a damned distraction.

For all its unsubtle sentimentality (including a you-can-see-it-from-a-mile-away plot twist), it remains unclear whether Little Boy intends to celebrate the conviction of belief or to mock it. It’s an unfortunate confusion that permanently stunts its growth.

While Lopez carries off the overdone damsel-in-distress schtick somewhat credibly, Guzman fails to step up to the trickier role of her seducer and stalker.

It's hard to imagine how anyone could remain dry-eyed while watching the scene in which John Q. tries to cram in a lifetime of fatherhood advice in a goodbye speech to his son.

If only Bullock could have foreseen how bad Premonition would turn out to be, she would have spared herself (and us) a lot of agony.

It's a bad movie that only a parent could love.

It’s like being haunted by outsized chimney sweeps that never bathe. And for the most part, it’s about that scary.

The fun in Norbit is watching Murphy at work – the guy has a knack for bringing the physicality of his comic characters to life.

While the somewhat indefatigable Stone may survive this misfire (she's survived plenty of others), Lumet may not.

The movie aspires to be an inspirational screwball comedy of sorts about the stresses of motherhood, but the situational humor lacks the spontaneity necessary for some crazy fun.

The movie simply trudges along, tirelessly making its rounds, just like its holy sister walking impoverished streets with grim purpose.

It had a little originality, unlike the other sequels, but not much.

There’s something earnest and forthright about the movie, despite its misguided execution.

It’s like watching a cartoon version of American Idol on an endless karaoke loop.

Avoid it like the plagues.

This mirthless comedy about a manly crew of smokejumpers helplessly babysitting a trio of rescued brats has more dead air in it than a radio broadcast hosted by a narcoleptic disc jockey.

Jawdroppingly bad, this adaptation of Michael Crichton's 1980 novel about a talking ape named Amy and a fabled lost city deep in the jungles of central Africa is as sophisticated in execution as a Jungle Jim movie.

A wretched experience from start to finish.

I give this the BOMB!

It's the kind of bad movie that gives bad movies a bad name.

It's like "Jackass," but with a budget and no midgets.

The laughs are few and far between.

A gruesome whodunit that's missing more than a few brain cells.

And the rest of the movie? Same screaming, same endless chases, same breasts, same blood, same axe, same lack of explanation, same ending primed for another sequel. Is there a pattern emerging here? In short: same as it ever was, same as it ever was.

I'll maim, chop, slash, and I'll kill, Just as I please.

Assure Patient, who has paranoid delusions about Jennifer Lopez being molded into the new M______ C_____, to rest easy because Lopez has never made a film as bad as Glitter.

It's the same old story, seven times around, you just can't keep a good corpse down. ’Spite a massacre the film before, To Crystal Lake, they keep coming more. And one by one, they end up dead – a sliitted throat; an axe in the head.

The dialogue is enough to make your hair stand on end.

It’s McHattie’s bizarre turn as the beleaguered town’s mayor that steals this show. Taking his cue from another infamous Ontario public servant, he gives a performance that can only be described as bat-shit crazy. Fitting, eh?

Trying to encapsulate the movie's storyline is not possible; it doesn't appear to have one.

This gloriously messy celebration of New Orleans’ musical legacy is a savory gumbo of uniquely American ingredients – jazz, blues, soul, rock ‘n’ roll, gospel, funk, hip-hop – generously seasoned with love and respect for the largely African-American artists who forged that heritage over the past three centuries.

Apart from the nowhere storyline devoid of any interesting character development or conflict, the movie feels vaguely exploitative.

The story and screenplay by Cameron Larsen and Jose Prendes, respectively, take a significant liberty with the legend for the purpose of a last-minute revelation that’s more a yawner than anything. But even if the disclosure had worked, the film offers little authentic horror (the one jump scare doesn’t count) and its suspense is negligible, though some creepy imagery, such as scorched dismembered doll arms, may momentarily get under your skin.