Your basic Lasse Hallstrom formula-film, featuring people in dire situations who are redeemed when their basic goodness comes to the fore, elevated a notch by a pair of actors displaying sides we don't often see.

Unapologetically cliched and determinedly upbeat (even when it shouldn't be).

At some point the foul language, lascivious sight gags, references to sex toys, violence against animals and cruelty toward children simply ceases to be funny.

The whole movie is too predictable, its conflicts either forced or simplistic.

Soul Men isn't much of a movie, but it bubbles along and reaches its percolating high point at the very end.

Could have been a contender, but it lacks the courage of its own ambivalence.

The casting in K-PAX is canny, but the picture as a whole is a clunky mix of the canny and the would-be uncanny.

The Emperor's Club is a beautiful fraud -- as gracefully proportioned as a Christopher Wren academy, yet as devoid of content as a prep-school promo film.

What makes the "Dolittle" movies stand out from this menagerie is the superb casting and matching of the animals and their human voices.

Killing Zoe lacks the incisiveness, the tightly controlled irony, and the blank verse power in the profane dialogue that enabled "Reservoir Dogs" to transcend its admittedly horrific violence. [25 Nov 1994]

Cold, bland and gimmicky - that's how the movie has turned out.

A gigantic mess.

Catherine Breillat's pretentious, meandering, self-indulgent portrait of a libidinously deprived young woman is nothing more than pornography tricked out as feminist parable.

Ragged and frenetic.

Rather than providing flashes of one-of-a-kind humor, Allen has reached the point where his critical and movie-going fans are humoring him.

All in all, Jennifer 8 is about four bricks shy a load and two hours too long.

While it's certainly too derivative to be a great movie, it's too goodhearted and modest in its aspirations to be denied.

Ready to Wear, though it boasts a few small delights, is unready to see.

Like watching a 90-minute game of the video game Asteroids - all bang and no buck.

The Banger Sisters stands as proof that no movie is so bad it can't be redeemed by a single stellar performance. That performance is by Susan Sarandon.

Director Gillian Armstrong drains all the emotional energy out of the people who dot her movie's lovely landscape.

Lively and inspirational, with terrific performances from a big star and a host of supporting players.

Modest, tasty, and it goes down easy, like home cooking.

Isn't a full-bodied comedy, and it isn't a bona fide action movie, either. It just makes a facetious spectacle of itself.

Initially an amiable sci-fi thriller that toys with the paradoxes inherent in time travel, it finally gets drunk on them. It becomes an incomprehensible stew of versions and revisions, until there's no there there and no then then.

It's a real shame the film gets mushy at the end. The result is an all too conventional ending on a film that should have been much better.

Lackluster in narrative and in no way original or innovative, the movie is pretty much generic Disney, a film about universal brotherhood stitched together from parts that worked better in other films.

As a romance, Spanglish is like a wholesome flirt who drags things out and becomes a tiresome tease. As a satire of upper-middle-class Los Angeles, it's a disaster.

Whenever its noble aims miss, Bruce Willis saves it.

A misfire in almost every direction.

Funny, sweet and only mildly offensive.

It's easy to be offensive in a movie; it's much harder to be funny. Which is why Scary Movie emerges as such a waste; when you're so good at the latter, why keep falling back on the former?

Chicken Little is relentlessly cute. That's the good news, and those who consider the word cute anathema may want to look for entertainment elsewhere.

Von Trier has assembled a fearless troupe of gifted actors - especially Jorgensen - to explore the outer reaches of human cruelty and vulnerability.

OK, so some of the scenes are a sham, but the mountain of suspense and adventure is enough to keep you captivated.

Isn't perfect, but it's fun, and Tim Allen shines

The real obstacle here is a lack of filmmaking imagination.

Delivers an unexpected sweetness.

Puerile, offensive, degrading, dumb, pointless, insipid and may just well be a harbinger for the end of Western civilization as we know it. But I laughed. Sorry.

Derived from a novel by former Miami Herald reporter John Katzenbach, it might be described as an inversion of the treasured '50s genre known as the Crusading Liberal Movie, as pioneered by, say, Stanley Kramer. But Just Cause doesn't just invert it, it turns it inside out, on its head, upside down and backward, then kicks it in the tail. [17 Feb 1995]

At one point, Liotta's character complains that he has ended up "in an episode of 'McHale's Navy.' " That's not too far off. If a sitcom is all you really want out of Operation Dumbo Drop, by all means, put on a parachute and jump. [28 Jul 1995]

It's hard to see Franklin's fingerprints on the material. It's as if he directed with his gloves on.

A one-joke movie. What makes it misfire is that its one joke clashes with its one idea.

Unlike Nicolas Cage in "National Treasure," Hanks lacks the game for it. The surface seriousness of these Dan Brown movies obstructs his affability and easy, attentive way with romance.

The most satisfying escape of the day was mine, from the theater, at movie's end.

The lack of condescension is the movie's saving grace, if grace is the right word. There's no snobbery to the low-blow humor, or to Reynolds' low-key, genial comeback turn, or to Sandler's more-ingratiating-than-athletic lead performance.

The film may not be art, but it's got a beat and you can definitely dance to it.

I found the sight of McAvoy as a piano player in jazzy-seedy duds a lot more disconcerting than Ricci's porcine prosthesis.

As for the Ya-Yas: They're not as much fun as the First Wives' Club.

Blues Brothers 2000 doesn't tell much of a story, but it makes for one smokin' concert. [06 Feb 1998]

The sad truth is that the film squanders almost all of its inspiration in the first 20 minutes or so.

17 Again errs not only by covering such well-trod ground, but also by doing so through a main character - played by a game but ill-served Zac Efron - who's about as dense as they come.

The film saddles Craig T. Nelson with the generally thankless role of Paxton's cold, distant dad. But when he feels like the only person who doesn't understand what's going on with Tate and his son, you feel like saying, "No, me too."

A strictly by-the-book sequel: It doesn't cheat series fans but it doesn't offer many thrills or surprises or lingering puzzles, either.

The movie's own style is strictly an anti-style, all pre-packaged post-punk.

As shallow and manipulative a movie as any that come to mind.

Shark Tale is "Finding Nemo" with bigger-name stars, far less heart and, the guess here is, about one-third the staying power.

Young Cyrus is undeniably cute, and some of her songs are as catchy as the law allows - especially "Hoedown Throwdown," But asked to anchor a full-length movie, she simply doesn't have the chops to pull it off.

All it offers is sadism, impure and simple.

As social commentary, Fun With Dick and Jane wears Leno-thin. As a big-screen sitcom, it's a procession of hit-or-miss touches that cancel each other out.

While I have no problem with slackers making me laugh, when they start preaching, that's when my ears close and my eyes roll.

A frequently hilarious exercise in one sex desperately trying to figure out the other.

A comic-book rock band starring in a film that actually makes a point? Now that's something worth singing about.

In the Cut is a disaster. Familiar to the bone, arty on the surface, it could serve as the doomed pilot for a nightmare TV spinoff: Law & Order: Literary Victims Unit.

Apart from the movie's moments of flesh and fantasy, it lacks the lyric impulse that would make the swank fantasy take flight.

(Perry and Willis) are blown off the screen by Amanda Peet and Natasha Henstridge.

There's comfort in seeing actors we know doing what we've come to expect them to do. But more important, the film surrounds them with supporting characters who are less familiar to us, who act in ways we don't expect.

With an all-star cast maintaining an amiable tone throughout, the result is a movie in which everyone should see themselves for at least a few minutes (and wish they were that young, that beautiful and that well-off).

The Matrix Revolutions blends feather-brained, starry-eyed camp and rock-'em-sock-'em spectacle -- so it's at least more entertaining than the second Matrix film, which hung in the air like a noxious cloud.

Uneven and affecting movie.

The one perfect aspect of Jennifer's Body is its title: No one is going to like this movie for its brain.

The problem with Lions for Lambs isn't its political engagement but its cinematic disengagement. Robert Redford directs and stars in this ambitious talkathon, which would have been more effective as a radio play.

Little more than an electronic press kit for the band, produced for the benefit of its fans.

To its credit, Heartbreakers lives up to expectations. Almost.

Not since Rocky II has there been a more blatant attempt to recapitulate a box-office hit without adding any new attraction or appeal.

Celebrates heroes without turning them into saints.

The action is thrilling enough.

Forget any hope of raffish adventure if you think of seeing Flyboys.

Costner does something difficult: In the middle of a tepid comic whirlpool, he finds the humorous aspect of inertia.

The Legend of Bagger Vance is nothing but "The Natural" with Will Smith playing the bat.

Hasn't got quite the right sound as it did in Annie Proulx's novel.

Watching The Lost City is like falling into a delirious dream on a marathon train ride only to be roused every 15 minutes by a conductor punching your ticket or barking out the next stop.

The Wild suffers from a breakneck pace that seems to exist only so that director Steve Williams can earn his nickname of "Spaz."

Better than his previous films, The Day After Tomorrow plays to Emmerich's strengths, making for a thrill ride that rarely disappoints when it matters.

Director Martin Campbell and a quartet of screenwriters dump in everything from the rise of the Confederacy to the development of Weapons of Mass Destruction. What escapes them is the cool, clear line of action that would enable Banderas and Zeta-Jones to flaunt their amorous charms without huffing and puffing and stretch their swashbuckling muscles with dash, not balderdash.

Predictable but utterly engaging, 27 Dresses will likely be remembered as the film that made Katherine Heigl an A-list star.

It might be a solid hook if we thought their love was grand. Instead, it's kind of creepy.

It's all done with such good heart, and Stiles is so perfectly appealing as one of cinema's most grounded Cinderellas.

On the plus side, the casting is superb - and the acting, too. Although the context is overwrought and the moviemaking over-the-top, Washington acts from the ticker out.

Anyone who isn't charmed by the idea of a Beetle crossing the finish line first is either chronically churlish or isn't trying.

The soundtrack is guaranteed to send chills where they'll be most effective, and the ultimate resolution is a real shocker. While it doesn't explain away everything that's happened, it comes deliciously close.

The whole enterprise suffers from tired blood.

A comedy that doesn't work if you think about it too much. Cut it some slack, however, and you just might have a good time.

It's the ideal capper for a cop comedy with a refreshingly wry, adult and humane attitude.

There are the gadgets and the effects. But Cats and Dogs definitely could have been more fetching.

Thank goodness for Davy Crockett; without him, the Alamo could have proven the blandest heroic siege in movie history.

Semi-Pro is so shabbily staged, shot and edited that it hardly ranks as a movie, much less a sports film, but hilarious people keep turning up in it.

Starts out mixing social burlesques and melodrama and ends up one more failed thriller about men behaving badly - and stupidly.