Like rocky road ice cream, The Rundown is chunky stuff, full of calories and easy to take in small doses. Also like rocky road, it’s bound to attract flies if you leave it lying around, and, more to the point, too much of it is likely to make you gag.

It's never wise to try to one-up a classic.

It's all rather clumsy and routine.

Shot with the creative energy of a mediocre sitcom, the scenes play out predictable plot devices with minimal creativity and even less risk.

Pixar this isn't, but neither is it "Mary Shelley's Veggie Tales." If only.

As scripted by Craig Titley, this first in a presumptive franchise is a dull, scattershot affair that owes much to both "X-Men" and Greek mythology, but which never seems to slow down enough to make any sense whatsoever.

Pleasant but dull formula film.

It's a botched job through and through, made all the more distressing by Bullock's recent announcement that she's throwing in the romantic comedy towel for a while.

The plot twists and turns on itself endlessly and incriminates everyone. It's as if the filmmakers are trying to incorporate all the plot details from all the classics they so obviously love. But love isn't enough either. You gotta have brains, baby, and a heart and soul would be nice.

It doesn’t work, however, and the end result is one long yawn of mediocrity, devoid of any genuine suspense, hobbled by incoherent plotting, and ending on a note of goofy what-the-fuckery.

That the audience for Ari Aster’s folk horror might find more pleasure in this Snow White than the average child is telling, since it’s almost impossible to work out who this version of the story is aimed at. Children will be bored, teens talked down to, and most adults will wonder where their Snow White is.

Grumpy Old Men is supposed to be about how love reinvents life and I'm not even really sure where it gets lost, but it ends up going nowhere.

The trailer for the film is more gripping than the feature itself.

It's exasperating watching so much top-drawer talent wasted in a film that wraps itself up with one of the most preposterous (not to mention obvious) endings the genre has ever seen.

The resulting film makes Sam Raimi's "The Quick and the Dead" look like a stone cold neo-Western thoroughbred.

The revelation of Little Ashes turns out to be none of the leading men but rather Gatell, a riveting actress cast as the girlfriend who is mystified by Lorca’s lack of sexual interest in her.

The real problem isn't that Anacondas is bad – it's just so bland, so unremarkable, so by-the-numbers, and so instantly forgettable that bad might be a step up.

At its core the film is as standardized as the exam it seeks to debunk, and nearly as tedious.

It’s not entirely clear what “generation” is the guilty one being examined in filmmaker Lauren Greenfield’s third full-length documentary, but it’s safe to say that we are now several decades into the decline of Western civilization (that Creem critic was right, you guys).

A hackneyed police story, rife with clichés, implausibilities, and weak performances.

Robin Hood isn’t as awful as all that, really. For one thing, it’s too singularly bizarre to be anything less than head scratchingly entertaining, and the action set-pieces are pulled off with much quivery panache.

Both Glenn Close and Mila Kunis are very talented actors, but Four Good Days gives them absolutely nothing interesting to say or do.

Not even the always reliable talents of McKean and Lynch can help pull this comedy out of its ironic slump.

It dispassionately plays like a video game with a high body count.

There’s little here to convince the audience of boy and girl’s special chemistry, and nothing to attach the audience to them, either.

As for Zach Galifianakis, playing a dim-witted drunk – file his role under head-scratching.

Everything that made the original series so memorable and succesful - its heart, its weird wit, its adherence to the morality play model - is completely lacking.

If you're going to dig the same shallow grave for the thousandth time, at least have the verve of Eli Roth's shamelessly fun Thanksgiving – or at least make sure the entire cast knows if you're going for tension or comedy.