Susan Wloszczyna

May be dull, but the familiarity of it all makes it feel ceremonial, a reassuring ritual.

Instead of focusing on gastronomic nirvana, this listless culinary drama feels and looks more like a glossy European travel commercial.

House Party has enough youthful exuberance to shake the rafters. Too bad it has enough plot to fill only a closet. [8 Mar 1990, p.4D]

I might have tolerated the film much more with the sound off. With the volume on, this movie feels like a mucho-macho Saturday morning cartoon—specifically Bugs Bunny toying with his eternal pursuer, Elmer Fudd.

But Live From New York! is required viewing only if the network’s own 3½-hour marathon salute to four decades of skit hilarity earlier this year was not enough of a retrospective for you.

A blah romantic comedy that has the bad taste to force the heavenly Ashley Judd into being an insecure, date-desperate, quirky career gal.

Yet, when it all clicks, Ephron is able to make the familiar sparkle anew. [25 Jun 1993 Pg. 01.D]

What ultimately should have been borrowed from Spielberg’s oeuvre but isn’t is a sense of wonder and achievement whenever characters come in contact with the unknown or overcome a great obstacle as a team. Imitation should be flattering, not flattening.

But all the devices and upgrades do little to bring the poetry's meaning into clearer and more relevant focus for today's audiences.

While the attractive cast is willing, the translation into '90s teen culture is weak -- like a clueless adult's notion of cool.

The opposite of entertainment, a self-satisfied soap opera from hell. But anyone itchy to see Ricci in her fleshy glory will adore her femme fatale for the Jerry Springer age, a Stanwyck stoked on steroids and SweeTarts.

Circle has a wit and warmth that makes something as glibly contemporary as Reality Bites seem trite and toothless. [15 Mar 1995, Pg.06.D]

A romantic comedy has to woo an audience into taking a chance on love. While You Were Sleeping is that kind of sneaky charmer, more riveting than ribbit-ing. [21 Apr 1995, Pg.01.D]

Those who feel a kinship to this brand of corn, dig in. The rest should head for the hills. [15 Oct 1993, p.5D]

Nothing better than boys with really big toys. Especially when the boys are men like Denzel Washington and Gene Hackman, top talents who duke it out among the nukes in the propulsively pulse-pounding undersea thriller Crimson Tide. [12May1995 Pg.01.D]

It is never a good situation when a subtitled foreign release is highly dependent on words to get its point across—especially when those words are supposed to make you laugh.

Young girls will enjoy Lohan's matchmaking antics. But nostalgia-craving oldsters should stick to fond memories of Hayley [Mills]'s heyday.

Director Chuck Hanson, who did The Hand That Rocks the Cradle, provides many pretty-postcard shots of Oregon and Montana. But he should have been the hand that rocks the raft instead of holding off on most of the foamy feats until the final minutes. [30 Sep 1994, p.5D]

Spend 60 years in jail with Eddie Murphy and Martin Lawrence, and you'll understand why they call it the pokey. [16 April 1999, Life, p.5E]

Let others recharge that tired Die Hard formula. Cameron invents a new kind of family therapy that saves your marriage and the world. [15 Jul 1994 Pg. 01.D]

Reeks of the kind of atmosphere that makes you reach for the Lysol.

Well-intentioned even as it surrenders to commercialism, G.I. Jane comes on like the ultimate battle of the sexes. But it ends up being an unfulfilling exercise in pseudo-feminism. [22 August 1997, p. 7D]

The "nonsequel" that regathers the inspired loonies who scaled the heights of giddy anarchy in 1988's "A Fish Called Wanda," is a different comic species. [24 January 1997, p. 3D]

Cusack's distinctive handling of his sullen poet offers an opportunity for Adult World to make a statement about youthful ambition and middle-age disillusionment beyond Billings dubbing Amy and her peers as "Generation Mundane." But the film just stops short of truly achieving that goal.

Too bad Boys has more gas than wind beneath its wings. [03 Feb 1995, Pg.04.D]

In its third go-round, the Lethal Weapon arsenal is running out of ammunition. [15 May 1992]

The same weakness that has plagued a goodly portion of major releases this year that rely on past successes for their reason to exist rears up again: the lack of the new and fresh.

Isn't smart enough to cut it as the ultimate blond joke. [25 April 1997, p. 4D]