It starts out promising, using the conventions and trappings of the fondly remembered Ward cartoons, but after a bit of good silliness with maps, stock footage, and the flustered narrator, a convoluted espionage plot, and way too much effort in fleshing out our two heroic villains results in a film that's as hard to follow as it is to laugh at.

Another addition to Universal’s Pictures Classic Monsters arsenal of crap (remember Van Helsing?), director Shore, in his feature debut, displays a fine sense of pacing but little else.

How can a movie narrated by Junior Brown and backed with wall-to-wall southern rock – a movie that at one point features co-stars Nelson and Carter tied together, surely a first in celluloid history – be so uneventful? Why, it's lazier than Sheriff Roscoe P. Coltrane's good-for-nothing hound dog, Flash.

Lucky You is redeemed slightly by the presence of Duvall as Huck's father, poker legend L.C. Cheever, who clearly spent more time being Huck's teacher than his dad. Their inevitable face-off at the final table of the World Poker Championship has just enough Oedipal overtones to give the movie a little heft.

Very little here begs to be paid attention to.

Kids may come out of Karate Kid: Legends crane-kicking in excitement from the handful of fights, and older fans can relish the nostalgia, but for everyone else it’s wax on, nod off.

The kindest thing that might be said of this Eighties nostalgia trip is that its formulaic plot and overall mirthlessness are meant as mimetic tributes to that blasted decade.

Its kooky hybrid of slapstick gender jokes already had whiskers on 'em in Shakespeare's day.

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?

Pardon the pun, but audiences will reap little from this satanic backwoods juju thriller.

Arthur overextends its welcome and relies too much on prop comedy.

Perhaps vice isn't what it used to be, or maybe Crockett and Tubbs just aren't all that interesting when removed from their appropriate time slot, but this may well be the dreariest and most monochromatic time you'll have at the movies all summer.

Even a C-section couldn't rescue the shallow script and overplayed performances by Hugh Grant and Tom Arnold.

While past parodies like Airplane! and the marginally worthwhile Hot Shots filled out down time with slapstick visuals and spastic throwaway gags, Loaded Weapon is content to lumber along at its own boring pace: you end up checking your watch between jokes, and there's nothing funny about that.

Almost insufferably sufferable. It's a chick flick of the tallest order, with schmaltz galore and the sort of ongoing romantic hubris that practically screams, "This is codswallop, right?"

Consider this yet another nail in the Eighties coffin.

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.

A studied but silly misfire from the director of the abysmal London Has Fallen that attempts to walk the walk without ever actually being a movie genre fans, or much of anyone else for that matter, would want to see.

Can barely limp to its final CinemaScope sunset shot.

The only thing saving Lake City from total ridiculousness is Spacek.

Ultimately sinks under the weight of its good intentions. It’s like watching Univision or Telemundo on the big screen.

The result is a goofy-weird mishmash of some pretty swell CGI creatures and some downright lousy screenwriting.

Although I'm generally a fan of movies that choose to star girls (of any age) as their lead subjects, Judy Moody and the Not Bummer Summer simply strikes the same whiny chord over and over.

There's a clumsiness here, a succession of setups and awkward payoffs that are so on-the-nose, so cringe-inducingly earnest, that it's hard not to laugh. Even the story behind Grace's name is more likely to trigger guffaws than the kind of sentimental welling-up intended.

Fumbles on so many levels it's just plain silly. To paraphrase the film's tagline: The Thirteenth Floor: You can go there, but why would you want to?

Only good old Leatherface literally mirrors the festering cultural and political corruption of the era, and to the film's vast discredit, this hideous echo is never even noted.

Whether it’s a case of miscasting is unclear, but without a willing hero to anchor this already dubious movie from start to finish, The Great Wall hits a brick wall.

Not quite loud enough to be a seasonal blockbuster, Mercury Rising is instead more of a dull thud on the action film map, fodder for Willis fanatics, and not much else.