Chicago Reader's Scores

  • Movies
For 6,312 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 42% higher than the average critic
  • 2% same as the average critic
  • 56% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 5 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Movie review score: 60
Highest review score: 100 I Stand Alone
Lowest review score: 0 Old Dogs
Score distribution:
6312 movie reviews
    • 39 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The real summit meeting here may be between the two leads. They're good at their specialties - Reynolds's casual jock studliness and Bateman's nervous white-collar introversion - and they're even better at switching into the other guy's shtick and mannerisms.
  1. A corny but sincere weeper written by Jonathan Marc Feldman, directed by Thomas Carter, and shot mainly in Prague.
  2. Inevitably, however, this oh-so-cosmopolitan setup gradually devolves into resentment, messy romance, and marital strife.
  3. Danny Glover and Mel Gibson make a gently contrasted (and nicely self-reflexive) odd couple in this action-comedy sequel.
  4. There aren't any flesh-and-blood characters here, only superimposed attitudes: it's almost like reading a rape-crisis textbook, with every lesson italicized.
  5. The high school is so sanitized that there are no drugs, cutthroat competition, or--inconceivably for a theatrical milieu--no gay students.
  6. The movie's mix of erotic Latin dance and vaguely liberal politics should have young girls swooning in the aisles.
  7. This remake is interesting mainly for the chance to see top-flight acting talent labor over dialogue so leaden you could cast bullets from it.
  8. With its sappy musical vignettes and encounter-session dialogue, the movie consistently overplays its insights, though all three leads contribute thoughtful and genuine performances.
  9. The movie lopes along from one half-baked scene to the next, interrupted on occasion by car-porn sequences.
  10. Muddled attempt at edgy comedy.
  11. This comedy-thriller that has no particular motive for changing tones.
  12. Eugene Levy is the only actor who emerges relatively unscathed in such a fetid climate; as for Joan Plowright, I hope she took home a healthy check.
  13. Someone had another Hospital in mind, and they even hired Arthur Hiller to direct it, but the attempt to merge black humor and strident social commentary seems even more uncertain this time.
    • 39 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    This romantic stinker is one of those films in which every plot development becomes a life lesson and every gesture is weighted with significance.
  14. The movie relies on the notion that postponing sex heightens arousal, but its lovers aren't any better matched post-coitus than they were before.
  15. Glitz with no mind and lots of fancy visuals, edited with a pounding beat.
  16. No one breaks into song, but this fact-based legal drama about a battered Anglo-Indian wife on trial for murdering her husband is infected with a fatal strain of heaving Bollywood melodrama.
  17. Live-action stars take a backseat to CGI chipmunks in this uneven family comedy.
  18. Mainly it's a shambles, though for once Williams gets to do what he's best at (his stand-up shtick), and the absurd story, no matter how carelessly assembled, keeps moving.
    • 39 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    A visually arresting period piece.
  19. Howard, as usual, seems bent on mixing genres to make several movies at once--monster movie, crime movie, coming-of-age movie, and action-adventure movie (among others)--yielding an overall narrative that's not boring but not especially suspenseful or focused either.
  20. Jeff Wadlow directed this exploitation flick, which seems designed for students on spring break.
    • 39 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Though the special effects are resourceful and the action scenes shot with surprising vigor, Albert Pyun's 1982 film is a little too self-important to provide a true B-movie pleasure.
    • Chicago Reader
  21. Its trickery might seem cute or clever to viewers who don't take either movies or people very seriously, but to me it recalled cynical "puzzle" films like "Memento" and "Irreversible," with no reason to exist apart from its gimmick.
  22. To call this Kevin James comedy fatuous might be misinterpreted as an attack on the star's girth--so how about inane, tepid, lazy, puerile, phony, and unfunny?
  23. Under the direction of last-minute replacement Richard Benjamin, the results are insufferable—grotesque, chaotic, demoralized.
  24. Most of the humor is of the kick-daddy-in-the-shins variety, though Anjelica Huston has a few choice moments as "Ms. Harridan."
  25. Slapdash plot, paper-thin characters, misogynist undertones, and mechanical crosscutting are all soft-core standbys.
  26. Crudup takes a riskier path: his architect isn't very nice and is possibly irredeemable. His performance is subtle, complicated, and fresh, and it's a shame the movie doesn't live up to it.

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