Tom Shales

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Washington Post
For 26 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 38% higher than the average critic
  • 7% same as the average critic
  • 55% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 22.2 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Tom Shales' Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 43
Highest review score: 100 Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
Lowest review score: 0 Shanghai Surprise
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 7 out of 26
  2. Mixed: 7 out of 26
  3. Negative: 12 out of 26
26 movie reviews
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    • 10 Metascore
    • 20 Tom Shales
    Death Ship
    Death Ship unfortunately turned out to be about as frightening as "The Love Boat." No -- less. Except for one grisly, chilling scene too horrible to describe, this one was an unintentionally funny stroll. And pity the poor actors -- George Kennedy, Richard Crenna, Nick Mancuso, Sally Ann Howes; it's the TV-jeebies. Strictly second-string city. [9 June 1980, p.B1]
    • Washington Post
    • 23 Metascore
    • 25 Tom Shales
    Hercules in New York
    It's a comedy to be laughed at rather than with, largely because the producers decided to dub Arnold's Teutonic voice with that of another actor, one who sounds like he's giving bus departure announcements at the Port Authority Terminal. [30 Jan 1992, p.C7]
    • Washington Post
    • 39 Metascore
    • 25 Tom Shales
    Flashpoint
    A nominal political thriller that has nothing to do with Flashdance, nor with much of anything else for that matter, begins in a ditch and ends in a sinkhole. Once or twice it gets up the energy and ambition to scale a hill of beans. [03 Sep 1984, p.D1]
    • Washington Post
    • 20 Metascore
    • 30 Tom Shales
    Paradise
    Writer-director Stuart Gillard doggedly imitates Blue Lagoon with precious little variation. [10 May 1982, p.C2]
    • Washington Post
    • 48 Metascore
    • 30 Tom Shales
    Doctor Detroit
    No one could accuse Dan Aykroyd of waiting around for the perfect script to come along. Doctor Detroit, now at area theaters, is as feeble a vehicle as any but the meanest mean spirit would ever wish on him. [9 May 1983, p.B12]
    • Washington Post
    • 13 Metascore
    • 30 Tom Shales
    Saturday the 14th
    "Halloween II" was funnier by accident than Saturday the 14th manages to be on purpose. Decidedly not a parody of all those very parodyable endangered teen-ager movies like "Friday the 13th" -- though that's what its misleading title implies -- "Saturday" merely resurrects a passel of haunted-house wheezes so antique that even the Bowery Boys would be driven to groans by them. [23 Nov 1981, p.C2]
    • Washington Post
    • 31 Metascore
    • 37 Tom Shales
    Godzilla 1985
    New World Pictures has been promoting the film not so much as a fright show but more as a campy romp (the comic trailer was more entertaining than the picture); unfortunately, it doesn't work very well on either level. [01 Oct 1985, p.E1]
    • Washington Post
    • 31 Metascore
    • 20 Tom Shales
    The Hunter
    Even this garbage-can world deserves a better grade of junk. [7 Aug 1980, p.B4]
    • Washington Post
    • 16 Metascore
    • 0 Tom Shales
    Shanghai Surprise
    Someone must have told Sean Penn and Madonna that people would come to see them in anything -- and poor fools, they believed it. "Anything" in this case amounts to nothing: Shanghai Surprise, a quintessentially misbegotten fiasco even in the year of "Under the Cherry Moon." [24 Sept 1986, p.D2]
    • Washington Post
    • 48 Metascore
    • 10 Tom Shales
    So Fine
    A manifest abomination on every measurable level, So Fine, the painfully threadbare comedy opening today at area theaters, is easily as transparent as the peekaboo jeans that give the film its nominal but squandered topicality. The film's only conceivable distinction is that it could be the worst that Ryan O'Neal has ever made, and that's saying something. [25 Sept 1981, p.C6]
    • Washington Post
    • 31 Metascore
    • 30 Tom Shales
    The Legacy
    Unfortunately, even for devotees of the derivative, Legacy has all the scarifyin' power of National Geographic. It is a gross, hollow and hokey joke in which even the red herrings prove anemic. [05 Oct 1979, p.B1]
    • Washington Post
    • 30 Metascore
    • 10 Tom Shales
    Legend
    Legend may turn out to be legendary, but not in the way the filmmakers intended. As a flight of fancy, it has the balletic grace of the goony bird, crashing on takeoff and spending the next 90 minutes in a fluttering tizzy on the ground. [24 Apr 1986, p.D3]
    • Washington Post

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