Too much fun to ignore.

It's so wispy that at the end you wonder: Exactly what runs in the family?

In Head of State, Rock may be verging on becoming a heart-warmer.

Oddly, for such a terrible movie, it looks fabulous. [4 Apr 1997]

In this movie, when the honeymoon is over it's really over.

Remember mood rings? The Ring Two is a mood movie - a bad-mood movie.

From the start, this movie sets the bar high -- then, unfortunately, runs smack into it.

Connie and Carla is a good-hearted comedy that missteps by trying to become a moralistic one.

It doesn't take a genius IQ to figure out the movie's final twist far in advance, leaving the attentive viewer to wonder only about how Shyamalan will pull it off and to hope the movie doesn't turn silly.

Too bad Kidron, Fielding and company pay only cafe lip service to satire.

Cadence is a bare-bones film. It needs more fill-in, but in spite of its gaps is entertaining and even a little provocative. It is a movie that says something positive about humankind, and there aren't that many films that do.

But by the end, you're only watching to see how far Wilmot's pustules will spread, or whether his various diseases will really make his nose fall off.

Ultimately groans under the weight of its own quiet gorgeousness.

Turns the kleig lights around to produce a wry and dead-on commentary on the film industry and the journalists who cover it.

The mystery is, how the filmmakers still managed to come up with a movie that will satisfy almost no one.

Malibu's Most Wanted mines a well-worn comedic vein, but does so with a consistent good humor and surprisingly deft touch.

Eagle Eye has half an idea in its head, but over two hours there's no time to complete or explore it, since the movie isn't just a chase but a combination steeplechase and destruction derby.

It's not a comedy-drama, really. It's let's-all-share therapy in beautiful Boulder, Colo.

Besides offering the giddy pleasure of seeing Mia Farrow play a demonic nanny, there's not much to the film that a repeat viewing of its earlier incarnation couldn't provide.

The Mexican is its own worst enemy, consistently undermining its best efforts. The result is an over-long series of quirks, a film that's far less than the sum of its often amusing and ingenious parts.

The biggest problem with Jersey Girl may not be exactly its fault; what is up there on the screen is cute and funny and heartfelt, even if it is unflinchingly formulaic.

The filmmakers lack any visual sense of humor and any talent for sustaining long-form comedy; the stunts have less wallop than a TV bloopers show and the Oedipal family slapstick goes around in circles, in more ways than one.

A strictly by-the-numbers job that, sans Freeman, would be beneath contempt. So congratulations, Morgan Freeman: Your contribution to Chain Reaction is to make it worthy of contempt. [2 Aug 1996]

Much of Light It Up has a familiar feel. But there are enough redeeming insights to make the time you spend at this school worthwhile.

Terrific looking in the extreme, The Beach is the movie equivalent of vacation reading: no more demanding -- and no less satisfying -- than a sandy paperback left on a damp towel.

With Anything Else, Woody Allen proves himself an old dog capable of thinking up some new tricks.

It's a mishmash of "The Bridge on the River Kwai," "From Here to Eternity" and "The Great Escape," with everything complex and entertaining siphoned off.

Barrymore gives a performance that's nuanced, assured and captivating.

Paycheck is one of those movies in which all the ingenuity went into the original idea and none into its execution.

As Shakespeare would have certainly written if he'd been on the movie beat, Double, double toil and trouble, movie stink and critic bubble/'Hocus Pocus' has no focus/has no rhyme, has no reason/ and is... out of season.

This film's playful visual language pulls you in rather than shuts you out; it isn't difficult to decipher, and it enables Coppola and his editor, Walter Murch, to navigate the story's many realms with a directness and dexterity that are refreshing.

Unfortunately, the waste of artistic possibilities dwarfs the human wreckage - and the human salvage - in Freedomland.

Signs of fatigue are all over the film itself.

More palatable than "Norbit" but equally uninspired, Murphy's benign, pedestrian Meet Dave mostly gives us "Mr. Ed," with a bit of Crazy Eddie mixed in.

The movie version of Love in the Time of Cholera doesn't have the drive or the dynamism to be an artistic nightmare. It's more like a dead dream, the kind that leaves nothing more behind in the light of day than a sickly cloud.

This dialogue isn't helped by two actors who look terrific but can barely choke out a word that sounds remotely authentic or spontaneous.

There's much more than a little Stifler here. Still, there's a recklessness to the character, as well as Scott's performance, that almost engenders respect; he's so determinedly unregenerate, so outrageously lewd, so unrelentingly grating, one almost looks forward to seeing just how far he'll go.

Overpublicized and underbrained,Basic Instinct is a bitter disappointment, worth maybe a 10th of the hype that the media have so obligingly ladled out for its benefit.

It may not advance the art form, but it's a movie with pleasures for the whole family, and nowadays that's saying something.

Wonderland marks a "biopic" first: Moviegoers will know less about the real-life subject going out than they did going in.

Here's hoping Allen's static Hennessey is due to an extreme acting choice and not plastic surgery. It would be tragic to lose a natural smile to star in garbage like Death Race.

The whole thrust of the movie is to warn black women against emasculating their men.

This is a movie that earns its suspense and validates its emotions, especially its examination of the bond between mother and child.

It's possible that a smart, insightful, sharp-edged comedy could have been written around these characters, but Trust The Man isn't it.

Angelina Jolie focuses her wild energy into outlandish heroics, and emerges with more attractiveness and credibility than all three of those silly Charlie's Angels combined.

A slick sci-fi thriller that comes complete with enough twists to keep audiences satisfied and enough moral quandaries to keep the thinkers happy.

Fans of horror-comedy probably will enjoy this movie, even though chuckles outnumber scares.

Unable to embrace the world he's seeking to depict, Cherot is left with a lifeless shell, a movie so preoccupied with being noble that it forgets to be interesting. The problem with G is not that it's unbelievable, it's just boring.

Regrettably, Bones is what passes for horror these days: Throw a lot of graphic, gore-filled, darkly lit stuff on the screen, and see what sticks. Discerning moviegoers should pass on the opportunity.

The movie gives us a time machine that resembles a twin-engined Mixmaster and a script that was tossed together inside one.

The movie, brief though it is, feels as padded as a travelogue.

This is harmless fun for the holiday season, but Tim Allen doesn't give movie the punch it needs.

How did an embarrassment of comic-book riches become simply an embarrassment as a movie?

What it is not is funny.

As a visual adventure, "The Lawnmower Man" is great fun.

The result may not make for a great adventure, but it's sure a fun ride.

Despite all its talk of genetic engineering and its deliberately stupid characters, the unintended message of Jurassic Park III is that when it comes to art and entertainment, you can't beat human DNA.

The special effects turn out to be not very special and not very effective, and the movie never achieves the lunatic grandeur of the truly demented. Stargate is strictly for the peanut gallery.

Must be among the most blatantly manipulative movies ever made. It's cold, calculated and treats its audience like its robotic central character.

Great casting ideas, like Glenn Close and Christopher Walken as "the King and Queen of Stepford," don't pay off, because the filmmakers' increasingly desperate twists alter the basis of the characters.

The movie has its moments, and some are undeniably affecting. But even those seem artificial, relying far too much on our familiarity with and fondness for the film's stars.

Is there anything more pathetic than a movie that will do anything for a laugh or a tear that doesn't get any laughs or tears?

A hollow, relentless mess.

Best advice: Just sit back and watch Freeman anyway. The man's a cinematic treasure.

Takes a great idea -- what if the inhabitants of a museum came to life at night? -- and milks it for every drop of fun it's worth.

It's a gore sundae with an S&M cherry on top.

Next may be the silliest movie of 2007.

The movie is a model of multinational incompetence.

Fluke tries hard to snuggle its way into the audience's heart but lacks the warmth and spirit to pull off the feat. [02 Jun 1995]

As comedies go, the unfunny Heavyweights sinks like a stone. [17 Feb 1995]

For the most part, it's uninspired, not much to look at and laugh-free.

About as clunky as a movie gets. It lurches from scene to scene with no sense of narrative grace, gives its roster of prominent actors nothing to work with and screeches to a halt with all the grace of a sprinter whose shoelaces have been tied together.

The Loss of Sexual Innocence is belabored, pretentious and often willfully opaque. [25 Jun 1999]

It seems that in the movies, at least, there is a limit to how far low expectations can take you.

Knowing offers mumbo jumbo on an apocalyptic scale.

It's hard to go wrong with a movie full of talking dogs. But the makers of Beverly Hills Chihuahua sure try.

What it does have is the laughs.

The pleasures of this slight caper film are strictly small-screen, as three talented actresses walk through quaint roles before they hurry on to the next project.

If John Witherspoon is among the funniest men in America, as many of his fellow comics say, why is he so painful to watch here?

Gives aficionados what they want and is surprisingly kid-friendly.

Candyman: Farewell to the Flesh is a just-better-than-routine horror sequel that watches in chilly admiration as some sort of apparition steps out of mirrors and performs atrocities on the unwary. [17 Mar 1995]

Fans should be satisfied, but it's hard to imagine anyone else will be much interested in TMNT.

Movie lite, a clueless, formulaic paint-by-numbers comedy.

Unless you think "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" was the height of genius, there's little reason to sit though another version.

Torque isn't a movie, it's an 81-minute soda commercial.

The movie could use less romantic boo-hoo-hoo and more Bunuel: It's engaging whenever Bunuel acts as ringleader or troublemaker, even when he's blustery and piggish.

Borders on poppycock.

Lovely to look at and listen to but doesn't reward any closer study.

Meet the Fockers? Avoid them would be a better suggestion.

If only La Mujer de mi Hermano had a dollop of humor and at least one character worth rooting for.

The movie is so confused about itself that it comes across as toneless, a bunch of characters wandering around in a story no one is controlling.

The secret reptile part of you yearns to see Berenger's laconic Shale enforce classroom discipline with his Uzi and back up the no-talking rule with a Claymore mine. But no. Rather, Shale tumbles quickly enough to the fact that more than routine violence is afflicting the school, that there is, in fact, a conspiracy.

In Stay, the director, Marc Forster, fresh from "Finding Neverland," turns Manhattan into a nightmarish dreamscape and his characters into self-destructive ghosts.

What's more annoying than the screenplay's relentless assaultiveness is its odd, sordid cuteness.

If only it had some funny lines, a focused plot and an idea that stretched beyond the initial setup.

Sahara doesn't waste time on introductions. It wastes time in other ways.

A bawdy, brainy sex comedy geared toward smart people with a sophomoric streak.