There's a movie opening today that is so indistinctive I can barely remember its name.

A mean-hearted, ham-handed and gratuitous effort to exploit it's teenage audience's conviction that, underneath it all, their teachers really. do hate them.

The result is an out-of-control, lost-in-the-funhouse experience.

It might sound intriguing to root the saying, "Physician, heal thyself," in the plight of a hypocritical self-help guru, but the romantic drama Love Happens suffers from acute irony deficiency.

Doing a sequel to "The Mask" without Jim Carrey sounds like a really bad idea. As Son of the Mask proves, it is.

Funny Games condescends to its audience like a pretentious, preachifying graduate student in post-modernism. It would help us out of the cultural quagmire we're drowning in, if only we could understand its highly convoluted and exclusive language. [29 May 1998, p.1E]

To call Death to Smoochy satire -- or parody, burlesque, or even lampoon -- would be too generous. The moviemakers merely glide on the thin ice of yesterday's cynicism.

Will have most audiences asking, "Can we leave now?"

Timeline lacks potency, drive, wit and personality -- all the things that make escapism worthwhile.

This kind of fiasco turns movie critics into so many Night Stalkers.

A misfire in almost every direction.

As a comic fable for hard times, New in Town is irredeemably moronic.

A pastiche of sadistic horror-movie cliches with minor traces of wit but major overflows of perversity.

Why would anyone pay to see this movie?

Watching this movie, with Diane Keaton cast as the ne plus ultra of irritating, overbearing mothers, is roughly the equivalent of listening to fingernails on a chalkboard for nearly two hours.

Dr. Seuss' The Cat in the Hat is gorged with shtick and gadgetry. When it comes to highlighting everything better left in the dark, it makes even the Matrix sequels look like works of genius.

The only bits worth watching are the scenes where Olsen is in full Carrey mode and Richardson is doing his best Jeff Daniels. The spot-on impersonations take the mind off the plot, the poo-poo gags, the clunky chase scene and the ripped-off finale.

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."

It's relentlessly dumb and relentlessly humorous, and those aren't the adverbs it was after.

This movie doesn't play; it just lies there, waiting to be kicked around by anyone unfortunate enough to have shelled out good money to see it.

Finds it as impossible to locate a laugh in glittering Bora Bora as it was for Operation Enduring Freedom to nail Osama bin Laden in gritty Tora Bora.

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

The film itself is an exercise in frustration.

Armed with few laughs, this clumsy sequel makes a sloppy mess of its plot ... and star Sandra Bullock.

Double Dragon may have its merits as a computerized contest of wits and strategy, but the movie is a stinker, directed with apathy (by newcomer Jim Yukich) and "written" by committee from any number of recycled movie plots. [05 Nov 1994]

Too bad the director ties everyone's laces together and they all go down in a jumble.

The whole thing is too preciously conceived. [05 Feb 1993]

Sorry, Phantom, but the purple suit has got to go. No amount of buff bod can make an audience take a superhero in bright purple seriously...And while we're at it, that script has got to go, too. Screenwriter Jeffrey Boam apparently studied the first two "Indiana Jones" movies so thoroughly -- so that he could write "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade" -- that he's carried many of the motifs to "The Phantom." The result is not breathtaking excitement, but rather a stunning lack of originality. [7 June 1996]

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?

A tired piece of hackery, made only slightly less distasteful by a couple of inspired moments from supporting player Alan Cumming.

Fails to meld suspense and farce or to bring even the wildest pursuits and smash-ups any visual sense of comedy.

How can we make the entire movie disappear?

Newsies is a live-action musical, but it's only barely alive. Call it "Snoozies." [10 Apr 1992]

But if the idea of tiny, little Sally Field in the Charles Bronson part strikes you as a bit silly, that's only the beginning of the idiocies. [12 Jan 1996]

Weekend at Bernie's II only proves what critics have known for years: that on the planet of the bad movies, there's no life after death.

A hopeless pastiche of timeworn plotlines, hackneyed dialogue and stultifying direction; to call it amateurish is a slap in the face to amateurs everywhere.

The most amazing fact about Supercross is that it took three people to write it. Two chimpanzees with a typewriter could have done just as good a job.

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

A gigantic mess.

Adam Sandler does Frank Capra wrong. His unfunny remake stomps all over the honest values and endearing qualities of the original.

Avary has taken a pig's ear of a book and turned it into a pig's ear of a movie.

Tedious almost beyond endurance.

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.

Director John Stockwell ("Blue Crush") and screenwriter Michael Ross have only two things in mind: titillation and giving young audiences something gross to whisper about in school the next day. On that limited basis, Turistas may well succeed. But that's nothing to brag about.

Jane Fonda does an about-face on her persona and her talent, playing a teetotaler and, what's worse, a pious bore.

Has the feeling of something done many times before.

A colossal dud.

Liam's deck is stacked. It's too bleak and filled with abrasive characters who don't deserve our sympathy to reveal much new about the human condition.

Thinner provides little suspense and no chills, not to mention rather offensive treatment of Gypsies, Italians and women. Acting isn't at a premium either.

Just plain bad.

Alone in the Dark will be the worst movie of 2005. The idea that anything could be worse is the only genuine scare the movie has to offer.

Brand's script is a puzzle without a satisfying solution. Even at its supposedly heartfelt conclusion, it's more ironic than emotional, more of an art thing than a suspense movie.

Even with help from a pathetic Kid Rock and a boost from always-on Christopher Walken, Spade can't pull this off.

Glitter does no one any favors.

It's about as much fun for the viewer as being dropped into a virtual-reality version of a highway-safety crash film. Hall writes and directs with the finesse of a rusty hatchet.

All it offers is sadism, impure and simple.

Ghosts of Girlfriends Past displays nary a wisp of life, let alone an afterlife.

If the movie were merely unfunny, one might dismiss it with an airy wave of the hand in a paragraph or two without breaking a sweat or digging into the old adjective tool box, but "Car 54, Where Are You?" is actively repulsive.

Here's my nomination for future grindhouse double-bill from hell: Pathfinder and "Apocalypto."

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.

There isn't an earned moment of uplift or laughter in the movie. Everything in it is prefab.

Idiotic, ugly and ridiculous.

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

Margot at the Wedding is a Christmas gift for high-class depressives: a compendium of malaise fit for an L.L. Bean catalog.

The movie is a model of multinational incompetence.

Venom isn't worth a critic's venom, but a brief condemnation is in order.

All Alexander proves in Punisher: War Movie is that a martial-arts-trained woman can make a film just as stupid, coarse and numbing as any muscle man.

You leave this movie feeling mugged.

Go see Crossroads if you want to hear Britney sing or see her wear next-to-nothing. But otherwise, avoid this train wreck at all costs.

It's stupefying in its dullness and vulgarity.

Fame has today's usual gritty form of slick to it, but in every other way it's an Amateur Hour and a half.

Be Cool proves that when "cool" evaporates all it leaves are embarrassing little puddles.