The movie has considerable intensity, particularly when it views hunting as a form of counter-guerrilla warfare, with the gunboys wandering into the thickets, daring the big cats to come bite them and get a bullet for their trouble. It's best trick, though, is a straight steal from "Jaws" in which the lion -- I couldn't tell if it was "Ghost" or "Darkness" -- slides across the savannah in the high grass, just a form in the seething stalks, its tail alone visible, like a fin in the glassy water. There's a primordiality, a natural human fear of things with teeth and fangs, really provoked by that image. Too bad the movie couldn't have checked into that vein more often. [11 Oct 1996]

Lacks suspense, momentum and visual panache.

Imagine a Three Stooges short with a feel-good ending, and you get the idea.

Misfires on nearly every possible level.

It would be nice to say that Bruce is hilarious, rather than merely (and fitfully) funny; certainly, the premise suggests laughs more consistent and outlandish than are present here.

The overarching joke, of course, is that most movies are so lousy they might as well have been made by blind men anyway. Hollywood Ending is only mediocre, but you may leave wondering, what's Allen's excuse?

You leave this movie feeling mugged.

It's easier to accept a breakup when it's clear that the two parties are mismatched, but a better, braver film would reveal what caused the initial attraction.

Unfortunately, nothing in it rings with the faintest tinkle of truth.

Think you know where this film is going? You do, and the best thing about Must Love Dogs is that it takes only 88 minutes to get there - short enough to enjoy the film's modest, well-worn pleasures, but not so long that you feel your time could have been put to better use elsewhere.

A Good Man isn't hard to find -- it's all over the place -- but it does grow hard to bear. [09 Sep 1994]

Overdoes it and falls on its farce.

"Everybody loved him. One woman understood him," goes the ad line. But the movie makes you wonder how anyone could love this screw-up and why anyone would have a problem understanding him.

This picture evaporates midway through because the story itself is a one-liner. Yet it also has a cast that gets into the silliness.

Equal parts fantasy and cautionary tale, a film that manages to be uplifting and off-putting simultaneously -- fortunately, more the former than the latter.

This Heartbreak Kid makes the mistake of trying to be semi-heartwarming.

Utterly lightweight.

Lighthearted fluff, not piercing drama. Still, a little shot of reality -- or at least an acknowledgement of same -- could have done this film wonders.

The latest in a line of quirky, feel-good British comedies, Greenfingers fits right into the breezily entertaining mold but doesn't expand it.

The surefire laugh-getter centers on using a tampon to stop a nosebleed. Watching this movie, I had to hope it could stop brain-drain.

Put simply, Mona Lisa Smile is too much of a stacked deck -- a movie too concerned with ensuring that audiences feel a certain way to risk anything like nuance or interpretation.

It's like a Harlequin romance trying to pass itself off as something deeper and more profound.

Pearce makes you see why Edie found Warhol as irresistible as he found her. His otherworldly eyes focus on both who she is and what she represents. He sees her as a star.

"Hello, I Must Be Going," sings Groucho Marx in a clip from "Animal Crackers" at the start of the film. If I'd known what followed, I would have followed his advice.

A low-level hoot.

Fortunately, this film doesn't have to depend on off-screen dalliances to prove its worth.

As a spy film, The Sum of All Fears is flaccid, and as an expose of nuclear threats, there's not enough information.

There's pleasure to be had in a film that suggests teen life can be hard without necessarily being tragic.