Jawdroppingly bad, this adaptation of Michael Crichton's 1980 novel about a talking ape named Amy and a fabled lost city deep in the jungles of central Africa is as sophisticated in execution as a Jungle Jim movie.

Party Girl strives only to be as fun and lighthearted as its namesake.

Bridges is another example of Eastwood's remarkable economy of style as both a director and an actor. It is neither his best work nor his worst, though it is a fascinating exploration.

What Carlei captures perfectly, and what gives Fluke its affecting moments, is a sense of uncanny canniness that the “lower” animal world so often displays. That and a neat little plot twist (not to mention a touching rescue scene involving a chimpanzee and a terrier) make Fluke an interesting, offbeat family movie.

At its best, which is when it's exploiting both its eye-popping special effects and delicious production design (the interior of the haunted mansion is truly awe-inspiring), Casper proves itself to be passable, if mindless, kiddie fare. At its worst, Casper continually resorts to desperate star cameos to get a rise out of the audience, lame and phony heart-tugging to get them emotionally involved (and there is more of this nonsense than you might expect), and ridiculous, coincidental plotting to make sure this thing runs at least 90 minutes.

For his first shot at feature filmmaking, Longo does an admirable job of keeping the story line rocketing along, though his seeming attempts to out-Blade Runner Ridley Scott in the decaying cityscape department grow wearisome and the occasional wooden drivel that Reeves spouts adds a bit of unintentional humor to the proceedings.

Thrilling, a grand cinematic adventure -- beautifully handled myth-making from Gibson, who, by the way, is just fine in the lead.

Director Alfonso Cuaron, in his first American movie, has fashioned a world so real and so engaging that you can feel it and smell it and taste it as surely as if you were there.

McTiernan is an old hand at actioners and, like the pro he is, keeps the film rushing along from fiery stunt to stunt.

Amateur offers the inimitable Hartley style with a harder edge than his earlier films, and while the thriller elements of Amateur prove entertaining on a bigger scale, this entertainment may not endure for viewers not completely committed to Amateur's characters and Hartley's slow-motion storytelling.

Like something by Tolstoy or Dostoyevski, but -- of course -- on a much smaller, less ambitious scale, it is a work that weighs on your mind long after you leave it.

Go see it, get the adrenaline rush, and then go home and forget about it. It's noisy and fun, but that's all it is.

While the story of Wild Reeds may be at times unbearably obscure, the images infuse the film with a drama and beauty that is unrelenting in its impact.

What it all boils down to is that if you don't mind that artificially flavored, plastic-bagged, stale pink and purple stuff that gets passed off as cotton candy these days, you will probably like French Kiss. But if I'm going to indulge in the sweet stuff, it needs to be fresher than this.

Though Crumb is packed with information and telling details, the movie's objective is hardly art history or a survey of Crumb's place in the world of comics. The movie aims for broader subject matter, to discover something about the role art plays in the life of the artist, and about how the release of art may, indeed, allow the artist to function as a stable human being.

Carpenter's updating of the classic 1960 chiller is mediocre at best, and at times plummets into unintentional humor. It's arguably the weakest horror film he's ever made.

A refreshingly lighthearted look at day-to-day life in the inner city, Friday does suffer from a few problems in the scripting and directing departments, but entertains nonetheless, thanks mainly to the easygoing style of its talented cast.

It's charming, in its own little way, but really, this film has as much substance as a Cirrus cloud, despite fine turns from Boyle as the family patriarch and Warden as Godfather Saul.

The Basketball Diaries is a stepped-on product that never scores.

Schroeder's film is fun to watch, even when it's being predictable or brutal, but its memory is nearly gone the next day.

From the swooping aerial shots of downtown Miami, to the long, long-legged beauties that seem to crop up every time the action threatens to slow down, to the nonsensical lack of logic that permeates the film like the acrid odor of wasted cordite, Bad Boys oozes Eighties Hollywood clichés like no film since "Top Gun."

Although flawed in many respects -- it's not as smooth and silky a movie as it could have been -- Don Juan DeMarco nevertheless evokes a romantic mood that tickles and caresses.

Part historical narrative, part epic romance, and part swashbuckling adventure, Rob Roy is overly cultivated, resulting in a stiff, unnatural hybrid that's quite lovely to look at, but lacks spontaneity.

If A Goofy Movie was one-fifth as demented as Tiny Toons, it might have been worth watching. Instead it is bland, a barely television-length cartoon stretched out to fill a feature, and not much fun.

This latest Saturday Night Live movie spin-off is a whole lot better than it has to be, but consider the past standards Tommy Boy has to live up to.

A glorious, spastic mess. Jamie Hewlett and Alan Martin's neo-underground cult comic book Tank Girl comes to life looking, amazingly, exactly like it ought to, positively overflowing with an ever-changing riot of color, gratuitous violence, inter-species shagging, toss-away one-liners, and gobs of little wonky bits that will either knock you upside the funny bone or leave you reeling from out-of-it confusion.

Second-guessing the audience in the third act takes some of the wind out of his sails (the film wraps up the loose ends so tightly you can practically see the bow), but Hackford does his best with a King tale that many thought would be unfilmable.

What there is here is Damon Wayans ripping up the screen -- which is entertaining but doesn't go far enough -- but this film really isn't about anything else. My 4 1/2 year old cracked up at the butt jokes but doesn't know what “turd” means so he missed much of the verbal humor.