Certainly Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's creations have suffered permanent damage thanks to Ritchie's films.

Switch is highly recommended for Barkin's work, which has to be considered on a par with Steve Martin's similar comic turn in All of Me. [10 May 1991, p.C]

Van Damme is compelling only when he takes his clothes off, which he doesn't do often enough here.

The charm of the film (and it does have an effective degree) ultimately seems as synthetic as Jack's. Perhaps the real pickup artist of the title is Toback himself, hiding behind a winning smile as he attempts, for the first time in his career, to hustle the audience.

Rønning, who helmed a later “Pirates of the Caribbean” film and “Young Woman and the Sea,” provides serviceable direction of the material without offering much innovation. The film loses fidelity toward the end, as it becomes a crashy, pixelated monster movie, as the real world has no capability for hosting the sleek, bloodless appeal of the grid.

There's something vanilla about the whole enterprise, from the one-size-fits-all spiritualism to Phil Collins' generic world-music songs.

Even if the movie's only goal is to preach to the choir, its fondness for hyperbole and lack of discernment is more insult than rallying cry.

Offers something rare for a modern movie: an uncynical depiction of the redemptive power of human relationships.

The movie's fun, a lot of it having nothing to do with its specific subject.

I laughed three or four times, mostly at verbal byplay since director MacFarlane struggles when it comes to timing, filming and cutting sight gags.

The Theory of Flight is built from the kind of material that either soars or crashes with audiences. And here, it doesn't quite hold together. But if the film, as a whole, never takes flight, the actors do. Watching them bicker and sail up is so delightful, you only wish their vehicle could keep them aloft longer.

As directed by Ronny Yu, Bride of Chucky shows flashes of visual inspiration, and the script by Don Mancini is laced with tiny nuggets of humor. But overall, Chucky seems to be coming apart at the seams.

The generic bulk of Divergent hits its marks and moves on.

A genial "Hangover" for the AARP set, Last Vegas is roughly what you'd expect, or fear, but a little better.

Writer-director Silver, who trained in documentaries, appears flummoxed by the challenges of getting the audience inside the heads of these young men.

Only resonates when he (Brooks) strips it all away and focuses on parent and child.

Fairly entertaining and often exciting, expertly done in a way, but not especially engaging or new, and not as emotionally involving as its title suggests.

Neither sinful nor particularly bad, the movie nonetheless diverts us when it should transport us. Its heroes' hearts may lie out at sea, but its soul never leaves dry land.

The movie's sole selling point turns out to be its sweetness. Sandler, Segal and writer George Wing obviously like all of the characters despite the constant ribbing, and Sandler and Barrymore are as cuddly as a pair of love-struck walruses. But only a sucker would get too close.

The movie moves predictably to its feel-good finale.

Is it a political movie? Yes. A movie with strong ideas and issues? Yes. But propaganda with its heart in the right place is still propaganda, and seldom easy to watch.

All that — and yet, dull. Why?

It's not classic horror, but it'll do. [13 Jan 1995, p.18]

It's a scramble, marked by the unruly variety of visual strategies Lee prefers.

One of those movies that promises much but doesn't deliver. Despite a lot of misplaced talent, this movie is as silly and forced as its title.

Underwater never quite breaches the surface from good to great, though this well-appointed creature feature proves to be an excellent showcase for Stewart’s screen presence.

Usually what you're laughing at is ugliness, and that leaves a foul taste long before the 85 minutes have expired.

The problem is that the movie is, in comedy parlance, a "bit fest" -- it tries to generate its humor with a barrage of bits, or external gags, rather than letting it emerge organically from the deepening interaction between its two leads.

It's a raw and raucous rock story that, for once, gets the big picture and the small details right.

This sequel succeeds as a slightly convoluted, paint-by-the-numbers buddy/action comedy with fast, funny banter and well-choreographed fight scenes.

Caddyshack has a low-budget look that warmly welcomes the all-important teenage audience. It looks like a film they could have made. And everyone associated with the film—in front of and behind the camera—is aware that he or she is making a frivolous film...That's why Rodney Dangerfield's cornball jokes and spritzing barbs are so perfectly right for the film. These are throwaway jokes for a most disposable motion picture, the kind of film that drive-ins were designed to play.

The Baby-sitters Club movie, written by Dalene Young and directed by Melanie Mayron, winds up seeming just as packaged and programmed as many of its summer competitors. The books, however obvious, don't talk down to their youthful readers. But the movie does. [18 Aug 1995, p.F]

This one's likely to vex both history buffs and those who require some drama with their drama.

The Lara Croft reboot Tomb Raider isn’t half bad for an hour. Then there’s another hour. That hour is quite bad.

A lot of nostalgia movies are so in love with their period details that they squander plot and character time on lingering shots of antique cars and storefronts. They wear their vintage with the self-conscious smirk of a 40-year-old stepping out in her prom dress. It's a hoot, of course, but it doesn't guarantee a good time. [25 Sep 1987, p.L]

For all the whiz-bang visuals, however, "Little" could use a little consistency in tone.

This is a brutally violent reset on the '80s franchise that ultimately became a punchline, but while it goes big on gore and atmosphere, Child's Play doesn't muster up any actual scares.

It's interesting - in its own let-it-all-hang-out, shaky-camera way.

21 isn’t pretentious, exactly, but it’s damn close, and in trying to whip up a melodramatic morality tale the film becomes an increasingly flabby slog.

A satire is only as good as its subject, and in the very funny I'm Gonna Git You Sucka, Keenen Ivory Wayans has found a rich and relatively untapped one. The wit and openness of I'm Gonna Git You Sucka has more to contribute to race relations than the smug piety of "Mississippi Burning." As a positive image, a good, shared laugh is hard to beat. [14 Dec 1988, p.1]

A clammy little number that might've been funded by the Department of Homeland Security.

If you were forced to judge it simply on its action-movie visual and technical elements, you'd have to count it a roaring success... . But if you lay aside that action and watch the people instead, it's a morass of dimwitted family crises and hack action-movie cliches.

No question, the new movie is amiable family entertainment, and Allen is such an affable actor that maybe kids won't begrudge him seeking romantic fulfillment in order to remain their favorite Santa.

Elaborate misfire, which misuses an unusually good cast.

Manages to leave the impression that it was funny even though most of its jokes don't score.

Black delivers the best line (“Do you want me to get naked and start the revolution?”), and Lithgow scores a giggle for calling his ex-wife “coyote ugly” to her face, but neither of them can disguise this lemon.

This is digital fake-ism all the way. Audiences bought it the first time; they're likely to buy it a second time.

The aftereffects of watching Lockout include an inability to focus or to complete a simple declarative sentence without an ill-timed cutaway in the middle.

Despite the superficial Hitchcock trappings, from the Bay Area locales to trains and high places, the comedy thriller is neither particularly comic nor particularly thrilling, and after this outing, director Carpenter (Halloween, Starman) may wish to stay out of sight as well. [28 Feb 1992, p.B]

Director Joseph Ruben would have done much better to limit the physical horror and make it more of a psychological terror game.

It's junk, and it's excessively violent, which is a given. Approach it as a Stallone movie (which it is) or as a Hill movie (which it is), but it's more interesting as a Hill movie. If it gets this director back into the hard-driving action game, then it will have done its duty.

Just Cause might better have been called "Without a Cause." Or "Without a Clue." [17 Feb 1995, p.C2]

The movie makes a worthwhile attempt to break down some thick emotional walls and, at the same time, tell a good story. That it is mostly successful in providing more than a few solid laughs and smiles--in what, after all, is a war picture--says a great deal. [28 Jul 1995, p.H]

Rarely has the question of a documentary's artifice mattered less. I genuinely hated this picture, almost as much as I've admired Phoenix's work in everything from "Gladiator" to "Walk the Line" and even the hackneyed but affecting "Two Lovers."

For one thing, and it's a big thing, it's filmed all wrong. Director Taylor and cinematographer Charlotte Bruus Christensen favor handheld, Rachel's-eye-view close-ups, by the woozy hundreds. The toggling editing rhythms get to be a bit of a chore.

It's still a disappointment: a well-mounted and well-acted suspense movie that, thanks to its illogical script, falls off a cliff midway through.

So intent on driving home its worthy if not mind-blowing message that it becomes surprisingly conventional.

Astonishingly, Angels & Demons IS the same sort of lumbering mediocrity.

Where the original was a serious film with funny moments, this movie isn't sure if it's a drama or comedy, too incompetently rendered to be both. What it accomplishes instead is to be nothing at all. An excessive, stupid, empty-headed nothing.

What proved tasty in book form comes across a little more like work in the movie.

Too often Tolkien lumbers up to its big moments, such as the preposterous climax involving the title character scrambling around the western front, calling out his schoolmate’s name. Fact or fiction isn’t the issue. Either way it plays like hokum.

The structural sibling to Paul Haggis' race relations opus ("Crash"), but beyond the similarly interwoven vignettes, it's a different animal altogether: messier, more complicated and ultimately more interesting.

Twenty or 30 minutes into Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium the urge to flee may rise within you like an oceanic tide. But stick with it. The film is very sweet--in fact it represents the dawn of a new sport, Extreme Whimsy.

It's no accident that the credits for the movie are a Who's Who of dance movie alumni: Director Anne Fletcher choreographed "Bring It On"; screenwriter Duane Adler penned "Save The Last Dance"; and the movie was photographed by Michael Seresin, who shot "Fame."

I wish it were truly special instead of an interesting near-miss.

There's a good movie in this story. The one that got made is roughly half-good.

Writer-director Thom Fitzgerald's ambitious but hopelessly inchoate AIDS drama is actually three separate, sequentially-told stories.

Gives us a lot to enjoy and something most studio movies don't even try for: an attempt at the richness, density and sheer contrariness of life.

The movie, let it be said, is not awful, but the kinetic battles are chaotic, and the look of the Quantum Realm is oddly drab in its interweaving of digital and VFX elements, seeming at times to be more like several first drafts of a new “Star Wars” franchise instead of a natural extension of this one. Midway through, as everyone on screen was restating their interest in getting home again, I thought: Same!

The Doom Generation can't help but choke on the poisonous fumes of its own cloudy existentialism. [10 Nov 1995, p.G]

There isn't much nuance or complexity to be found in The Call of the Wild, but it's an old-fashioned animal-friendly adventure flick for kids, a modern-day and high-tech “Benji” based on a classic piece of literature.

This one's just OK, but at midnight, after who knows what, OK might be enough.

Everything not right with Don’t Worry Darling wasn’t right from the beginning. Even a good director — and Wilde is that, though her hand in developing this material clearly wasn’t without some wrong turns — must deal with script problems if they’re there, in the story, lurking and waiting to mess everything up and send audiences out muttering, wait what?

The film plot about the needy kid who redeems a male loner has been done to death, and on the surface, Martian Child just looks like another entry in the genre, a close follower to “About A Boy.”

It’s just not funny or fresh enough, and that has everything to do with the material and how it’s handled visually, and nothing to do with the people on the screen.

This dizzy sequel can’t match any of the first “Detective Chinatown” action highlights, such as the food fight at Bangkok’s floating market. Here’s hoping the third outing, which will take the main characters to Tokyo, returns to the amiable, artful high jinks of the first.

The Mountain Between Us falls flat, struggling to truly enthrall beyond a basic love story.

The action is brilliant, the combat sharp and rattling, and the film follows the historical record more closely than most Hollywood films.

Whitaker's performance is the rock here. Even when the confrontations and evasions get a little ridiculous, he's neither wholly saint nor sinner, but something like a human being.

Never quite measures up to Pemberton's reach, but there remains enough to be excited about to wonder what will follow this imperfectly made though valuable work.

Stranded in this charmless fantasy, Stiller is reduced to his old halting, squirming tricks.

The movie's heart, of course, is with poor addled Mike and his kids, but 17 Again works only fitfully to make the Efron/Perry character worth a story.

A mostly bland, sporadically crude, by-the-numbers romantic comedy about two gay men in love.

FX 2 is entertaining enough, but lacks the zip and wit of the original.

Good, grungy fun.

Evans and Kelleher could have used the same premise to tell a different story -- one in which viewers could relate to some of the perks of being First Kid instead of just the inconveniences. Luke could show kids a more exciting world. [30 Aug 1996, p.C]

Felitta and Reiser mean nothing but well with this project, but too many lines sound fraudulent, and Reiser, it must be said, is a hopeless ham in the reaction shot department.

Kuzui has imposed a heavily block-lettered feminist message on the movie, suggesting that Buffy discovers her empowerment as a woman by driving huge, phallic stakes through the hearts of her enemies. In this case, having it all means being feminine and bloodthirsty, too. [31 Jul 1992, p.B]

The Proposal reworks "Two Weeks Notice" with the genders switched.

Mastrantonio, though capable throughout, is never provided with the spark that might ignite her subtle fire. Hulce is firmly the center of events, but, like the dancing habits he displays in flashback, he bounces around this movie like an pinball out of control. [6 Nov 1987, p.48]