With a "Lost"-meets-"The Haunting" plot and a handful of convoluted thematic twists involving family, history, murder, and death, The Abandoned limps into a nebulous kind of horror netherworld, peppered with painfully long tension-building sequences and unimaginative dialogue.

Misogynistic, homophobic, scatological — none of these words come up in any of the spelling bees that take place in Jason Bateman’s directorial debut, but they apply to the film.

A vapid, charmless update of Buster Keaton's 1925 film "Seven Chances."

Its squandering of talent makes Class Action a film that deserves to be disbarred, not reviewed. [15 Mar 1991]

Nora Garrett’s screenplay isn’t concerned with fleshed out characters; everyone here is a stand-in for some issue designed to get a rise out of the audience.

A sloppily made bowl of reheated chick-flick cliches.

Everything about Couples Retreat feels plastic, though: the jokes, the trees, the extras, the attitudes. It’s dumbed-down entertainment aimed at a dumbed-down audience - the comedy equivalent of a McMansion.

It's a movie Playboy spread, with irksome misogynist overtones. And, as the camera swoops liberally along the tropical seaport, it's hard to imagine how such a lovely spot was made to seem so tawdry and so tedious. [28 April 1990, p.8]

It's amazingly suspenseless and devoid of substance. [05 Mar 1993]

This is not a movie that has great passion for pleasures of the flesh. Its sexiest scenes involve bullets cutting through the air in the slowest motion possible.

This movie is a raging, unwatchable bore, filled with unnecessary details and interminable ramblings. Though it runs a mere 76 minutes, it feels like 76 hours.

Not as desperate, unfunny, and nonsensical as its title. It's worse. Worse than you can imagine. Unless, of course, you've imagined 90-something minutes of bloopers and outtakes that congeal into a story -- much the way a scab is formed.

The movie wants us to find this frightening, but there's no suspense, no terrifying images.

On just about every occasion in Meet Dave, Murphy appears to be on the verge of cracking himself up. This is good news. At least someone found him funny.

The most uncomprehending sequel of the last few years. It shows no awareness at all of what made the first film work so surprisingly well. What little emotion it summons is superficial and sentimental. The rest of the time it falls back on dumb farce and embarrassing Brit-bashing, climaxing with a vacuous chase scene. And this in a film that's supposed to be more mature than its predecessor. [21 Nov 1990, p.37]

We have to endure 93 minutes of this torture, with only a few high points.

Despite the frenetic pace, “Saturday Night” falls flat and fails to raise one goose pimple.

It's hard to have sympathy for a movie that tosses in the old shower sneak-up sequence or allows its characters to speak as obviously as possible while standing in a pool of red liquid.

Heartlessness, stupidity, cynicism, and greed are a demoralizing combination for movie-going. We pay to see a movie that doesn't respect us for being there at all.

It’s the cinematic equivalent of a classic-rock station, except instead of getting the genuine articles to serenade you, you’re stuck with a bunch of actors cosplaying famous folk singers.

Eddie Murphy and Nick Nolte are back in Another 48 HRS., and so is some of the chemistry between them. But although this sequel is more amped up than the original "48 HRS.," most of the thrills are gone. [8 Jun 1990, p.35]

Devoid of personality and has an annoying gratuitous sentimental streak.

This is the first time we've seen Myers in the flesh since he committed assault and battery on Dr. Seuss, and I wish the cat had stayed in the hat.

Like a lot of action-movie directors, Gray lacks the imagination to view the art of cat-and-mouse as more than a chance to play with state-of-the-art war technology.

None of this is as riotously zany as it wants to be.

The Quiet Ones simply has nothing to say.

The best we get here are modest action diversions.

Johnny Suede is too devoid of content to sustain our interest. [19 Sep 1992]