There is something admirable about Fun Size. Not in how it succeeds, because it doesn't. Whoo, boy, it doesn't. Rather, in how bad it is on so many levels, in how it will offend and disappoint different segments of its audience for different reasons. It's an equal-opportunity bad movie. Something to hate for everyone! [25 Oct 2012]

There's a great film hiding somewhere in the wreckage of "Love Ranch."

Peter Lepeniotis’ animated film brings together a good cast, including Will Arnett, Brendan Fraser and Liam Neeson, which sounds like a sweet deal. But it places them in an uninspired little movie about selfish behavior, which, while overcome (of course), never really manages to escape its bitter roots.

Unfortunately, screenwriter Christopher Bertolini has given Eckhart and Liebesman a story so riddled with war-movie cliches that it contains almost nothing else.

What we’re left with are a few PG-13 murders, uninspired performances, some not-so-scary urban legends and a couple of actresses who must be wondering how they got here.

With its convoluted plot and fading stars, The Double feels like a straight-to-DVD feature that somehow sneaked onto the big screen. It's simply not very good.

It’s not that overwrought violence and human depravity are unfit grist for art, but without a compelling plot and a modicum of character development, all this film has to offer is a repugnant prurience and heavy-handed atmospherics.

The production is nice looking, and telling the Edward-and-Wallis story from her side is an interesting idea, but it's one that Madonna simply can't pull off here.

The intentions were probably noble, but the execution not so much.

There is nothing brave about Bravetown, a film so paint-by-the-numbers bland that its efforts to piggyback the sacrifice of American servicemen and women for emotional depth is downright craven.

Neeson's performance is so eerie, in a buttoned-down sort of way.

Focus. Tooth Fairy isn't as bad as you may have feared. It's not all that good, either, but at least it's possible to sit through it and hold down your popcorn.

Brand ultimately can't make a watered-down Arthur as sweetly charming as the original, but he certainly makes it better than it would have been otherwise.

Paul Schrader, the once-brilliant screenwriter of such films as “Taxi Driver” and “Raging Bull,” has fashioned a movie that seems to exist to be repugnant. Maybe that’s the point; it was written by Bret Easton Ellis. Nearly every character in this movie is unlikable.

Aside from cast changes and some plot tweaks, there’s not much new to see here. James is an engaging presence, but as this season with the Lakers proved, he alone just isn’t enough.

When all the parts are sewn together, the end result proves as crude and slapdash as the monster itself.

[Costner's] utter conviction to such a daffy project is strangely endearing. You may never believe one minute of Criminal, but Costner sure does.

Thanks to Highmore's performance, George is worth sticking around for - and thanks almost exclusively to Highmore and Roberts, so is The Art of Getting By.

Oyelowo and Mara try to bring humanity and tension to the testimonial thriller of two lost souls finding their way together, but they only succeed in bursts, hampered by marketing copy masquerading as dialogue.

For a movie filled with amateur porn, sex toys, cocaine and Cameron Diaz's butt, "Sex Tape" is awfully tame. You're in greater danger of taking a nap than needing a safe word.

If you’re going to make an origin story, make an origin story. On second thought, if you’re Joe Wright looking to tell us where Peter Pan and Captain Hook came from, maybe don’t.

This is the first time in ages some of the old stand-up Crystal shows through, flashes of quick wit instead of Borscht-belt antics. Not to the extent that it used to in such movies as "When Harry Met Sally ..." (which was, ahem, 23 years ago). But better than you'd expect...Just like the movie.

Another entry in a long line of good video games adapted into terrible movies, Assassin’s Creed is ragingly stupid. That its incoherent plotline is treated with the utmost reverence by skilled thespians only brings its idiocy into sharper relief.

There's just not a lot to like here, with the exception of what may be one of the all-time best bad movie lines, one Conan utters to Tamara as a kind of personal credo: "I live. I love. I slay. I am content."

First-time writer-director Tom Gormican keeps the dialogue moving at a rapid pace, which doesn’t obscure the fact that most of what is said is dopey and witless.

The chemistry between Baldwin and Moore is strangely disconnected. The performers aren't bad, but they don't generate any kind of heat.

A lot of talent comes up empty in Red Lights, a thriller that doesn't thrill.

Forever My Girl is a bad movie, pure and simple. And pure and simple is just how writer and director Bethany Ashton Wolf likes it.

It should be funnier. It should be better. Instead, it just sort of is.

Occasionally cute but not much else, Alpha and Omega is an animated flick that doesn't leave much of an impression.

Carrey and Daniels are good actors, and it's understandable when an artist wants to revisit a career-high point. How much you enjoy Dumb and Dumber To will depend greatly upon whether you think "Dumb and Dumber" was one.

Like a good episode of "Smallville": You may feel a bit silly watching it if you're past high-school age, but you just might have a good time.

Will anyone really believe in this GQ-perfect big man on campus who lacks the courage to ask her out on a date?

It’s a lame, scare-free film that wants really badly to work in the vein of “It Follows,” but has none of the intelligence.

It’s all too much without ever turning into much at all.

This is a wretched movie, trading on characters we revere, yet doing nothing to honor them. Director Peter Segal tries everything he can to recapture the magic of the earlier movies, but to no avail. It’s all rather sad.

The story doesn't really have a focused plot.

The result is a pious mess of a movie that falls short both as history and as storytelling.

A popular topic for debate is whether television or movies are better right now. Movie defenders are not going to want to use Dorfman in Love to bolster their argument.

When Argylle is fun, it is really fun. Watching Rockwell and Howard run around the world is entertaining, for a time, but not forever. “Because these things will change,” as Swift sings in “Change.”... Maybe she should have written the movie.

Pat and silly, the movie offers a wheezy moral that a buttoned-up American just needs a sensitive Latino and some ethnic cuisine to end the blues.

The movie, based on the novel by Stephenie Meyer of “Twilight” fame and directed by Andrew Niccol, is just kind of dumb. Like the more famous books and movies, about a love triangle between a vampire, a werewolf and a human girl, it often plays like a teenage girl’s idea of how literary romances play out.

The Kitchen requires Scorsese levels of charisma to work, and only McCarthy comes close out of sheer professionalism.

Timothy Hutton is a good actor. So whom to blame for Multiple Sarcasms?

Everyone would have been better off if the editors had just cobbled together a 90-minute blooper reel and called it a day.

The charm of these movies — such as it is — comes from the notion of aging action stars slugging it out between wheezes. So when Stallone brings in a new cast of mostly generic warriors, the premise, like the movie, deflates.

Call it what you want, but the best word to describe it is: unnecessary.

The film's lack of common sense reaches out-of-control proportions in the final minutes.

Director and co-writer Jeremy Garelick doesn't even reach high enough to pick the low-hanging fruit, opting instead to gather half-rotted, fly-infested jokes off the ground and expect Kevin Hart to make them funny by virtue of being Kevin Hart. Only grudgingly will I acknowledge that he sometimes does.

The story of her life is pretty well-known. But in Diana, it’s not particularly well told.

Of course with this kind of film, not every joke lands. You’re hoping for a good proportion — more hits than misses. The ratio isn’t quite as high as you’d like with The Binge, but it’s close enough.

This is a first-rate cast in a second-rate story with some entertaining bits and some maddening holes. That combination works for late-night channel surfing. Anywhere else, not so much.

It's not as if every funny movie has to offer something in the way of social commentary or greater insight. Sometimes funny is just funny. Sometimes, as is too often the case here, it's not.

Relying wholly on good casting and the charisma of its actors, big and small, to elevate too-familiar material, the film’s stale humor hinges on two faulty premises: That the suburbs are inscrutable and that the people who live in them are clueless.

There's nothing surprising or fresh about these people, their problems or their pairing, each character fitting snugly into his or her familiar archetype.

The Forest is one of those horror movies that starts with an intriguing idea but has no idea what to do with it.

Bitter Harvest, bless its low-budget heart, means well. But George Mendeluk’s film, about the Holodomor, the forced famine and starvation that killed between 7 and 10 million Ukrainians, falls well short of its ambitions.

It’s a maudlin, meandering bit of moviemaking that sheds little light on the loyal opposition in the North.

The Dark Tower is a near-total whiff, a mess of a movie that took forever to get made and by the look of things should have taken about twice that long. Or maybe just never have been made at all.

It's all wildly uneven, but some bits really are funny. Ferrell plays his usual clueless character, but he's good at it. And it turns out a toned-down Hart is a funnier Hart. But Cohen can't keep a handle on it all. Worse, he has no feel for when the satire goes too far.

Beyond the Reach is a misfire, one of those movies that never quite rises to the level of guilty pleasure.

The movie is plagued with long stretches of dialogue-free contemplation and static shots of nature happening. At only 83 minutes, the film is too slight to feel so padded.

It takes effort to turn a movie with a cast as appealing as the one in The Longest Week into a grating exercise in narcissism, but writer and director Peter Glanz proves up to the task.

There are a few laughs here and there, along with a couple of jokes for grown-ups uncomfortably squeezed in. But this is a movie made for two groups: small children and people who have fond memories of the TV show.

There should be a sense of, yes, wonder at play at all times here. Too often “Alice Through the Looking Glass” feels like a slog through time.

Diggs does what he can with the part, as does Patton. There are some funny moments, because most of the cast is so charming. But not enough to make up for the Stone Age attitude about women and marriage.

The Possession of Michael King is more scary than original.

It’s not clear that the movie has anything to say, new or otherwise. . . . Other than that it’s just blood and guts, and lots of it.

Ultimately, the film is never boring, but it's never involving, either. At the end, what you're left with is a modestly entertaining film that doesn't seem to have an original thought in its head. In that way, it's a lot like the characters it spotlights.

The movie is much like its hero, Freddie — straightforward, sweet, hard-working and predictable.

Although it won’t win any points for originality, it is a fast-moving little chiller filled with creepy atmosphere and convincing performances.

It’s a stumble down the catwalk not even Blue Steel can save.

There's far too much going on in Valentine's Day, and far too little of it is worth the trouble.

Safe Haven plays out less like a love story than it does a two-hour audition tape Julianne Hough commissioned to land a lucrative lip-gloss-modeling contract.

It wouldn’t make the movie good, but at least a meteor strike would preclude the possibility of a sixth “Ice Age” film.

Ultimately, and perhaps most disappointingly, The Mummy winds up being not so much its own movie as what, by the end, feels like the first episode of a show that's already been renewed for several seasons. Because, in some respects, that's what it is.

This is a funny movie, in places.

There’s a freewheeling spirit to The Bubble that’s meant to reflect the times during which the film was made, but instead of creative forces finally unleashed it comes off as half-baked, more like a first draft than a finished film. Apatow knows comedy, and his intentions here are good. It’s just the movie that isn’t.

Jonah Hex somehow manages to waste the talents of Josh Brolin, John Malkovich, Michael Fassbender, Will Arnett, Aidan Quinn and Jeffrey Dean Morgan in a story that combines vengeance, the occult and an Old West war on terror (really).

The movie presents a cute lesson about the importance of family sticking together.

The utter lack of surprises and waste of a first-rate cast — Anthony Hopkins as Alfred "Freddy" Heineken; Jim Sturgess and Sam Worthington as kidnappers — make for a tremendous letdown.

The whole thing is sentimental corn, which isn’t bad if it’s handled with conviction and sincerity. But the direction by John Stephenson (better known for special effects than directing) is resolutely stiff and hollow. That’s murder for a movie dealing with miracles.

Let's just call "Allegiant" what it is: A way for the studio to make money and bring you back next year for the real finale. See you then. Maybe.

The cast is impressive, and again, Bridges is always a welcome presence.

A strong cast can't save Virginia.

It might have worked, too, if Black had anything remotely funny to work with.

Unfortunately, what the filmmaker has wound up with is something that feels like it should be playing at the bottom end of a triple bill at a drive-in.

It seems unfinished, choppy, the storytelling almost of the after-school special variety.

Annie has never been the most sophisticated of children's stories. The latest version is formulaic and predictable, but it has its charms, not the least of which is Wallis' easy smile and sassy screen presence.

This is a horrible movie. Which makes it not a lot different from the first film.

Just Go with It provides not only the title of the film but a one-step instruction for how best to enjoy it.

The jolts are of the jump-out-from-behind-the-door variety; you can see them coming from a long way off, too. Shyamalan seems to no longer have the confidence to let audiences figure things out or the patience to allow them to.

For one thing, all the characters are far too pleasant.

There’s so much bouncing around in tone and story that this film never really finds its footing. It flounders around trying to figure out what it should be, and never really settles on anything.

"I didn't hate it" isn't a high watermark for praise, but when it comes to most Sparks adaptations, it's practically as good as winning an Oscar.

The script to this flop doesn't even have enough laughs to amuse someone in the most boring of orthodontist waiting rooms.

A by-the-numbers romantic comedy as predictable as it is cloying.

There are few issues more bitterly divisive than abortion, with emotions and rhetoric running at fever pitch. October Baby is a faith-based movie that resides staunchly in the pro-life camp. Yet directors Andrew and Jon Erwin, who also contributed to the story, rarely let their film get didactic, instead going for a more low-key approach.