A coming-of-ager that nearly slaughters you by minute 30 with the relentlessness of its protagonist's voiceovers.

If a movie doesn’t care enough about its selling points, aka the stars, to give them decent lines more than twice per hour, the “bad” in “Bad Boys” ends up being the wrong kind of bad. And, in a truly sad way, its own review.

I guess there's something progressive going on when a lesbian love story gets to be just as dreadful and tacky as most straight ones.

Calling Dredd 3D a movie is sort of a lie. It's a premise, and there are levels to reach, and always there's another grimy hallway to stalk, and then you turn right or left, and then kill some more.

Knock at the Cabin is a real load — 100 lugubrious minutes of what is intended as steadily mounting dread and apocalypse prevention seminar.

Levinson has written and directed in many genres. But rarely has he made a film as indecisive and diffident as Man of the Year.

Stiller, a DodgeBall producer, is revealing an unfortunate craving for the cheese of his childhood.

A truly stupid film based on what should have been a surefire hit - a cross-country car race. Too many stars spoil the action, including Burt Reynolds, Dean Martin, and Sammy Davis Jr. [19 June 1981, p.2-8]

With such a bang-up cast, this setup could at least elicit some tears, but in its 107 minutes, nary a one welled up in my eyes.

It brings me no joy to relay this: From an irresistible “tell me more!” of a true story, Eastwood and his “Gran Torino” screenwriter Nick Schenk have made a movie that feels dodgy and false at every turn.

The latest, Untraceable, owes everything to “Lambs,” and to “Se7en,” and to all the “Lambs” and “Se7en” knockoffs made by directors less talented than Jonathan Demme and David Fincher. In addition to being dull, the Portland, Ore. -set Untraceable is a monster hypocrite, wagging its finger at the mass audience’s appetite for strictly regimented, “creative” torture scenarios.

The cast excels at transcending its material. The script by Justin Haythe matches Francis Lawrence’s direction; it’s workmanlike and steady and pretty flat.

The new music helps, a little. But the movie is a karaoke act, re-creating the original movie’s story beats beat-by-beat-by-beat.

It is, for what it is, a work of considerable care and craft. And it's completely soulless.

Applegate, whose comic timing gets such a workout on TV, seems uninspired in a role that is essentially flat. What she needs - what the entire film could use, in fact - is a good dose of attitude. [07 June 1991, p.I]

Salerno blows little more than smoke in this one, especially near the end, when we get to the maybe-probably-sort-ofs regarding the maybe-probably-possibly full vault of unpublished work.

The film is awkwardly stitched together from candy-gloss arena concert footage and somewhat grimier-looking backstage/limo/hotel room moments. There is no attempt to make it all hang together as an organic whole.

Ultimately, any sass, sentiment and personality are obliterated in the noisy chaos of the climax, which is a grayish brown blur of flying spaceship parts, whirling turtle shells and shouts of "the beacon!" It's more cacophonous than cinematic, and loses the quirky charm of the cartoon in the avalanche of computer-generated violence.

A dull and lethargic comedy. [19 June 1981, p.2-8]

Take Me Home Tonight, believe me, you've already seen.

The camera bobs and weaves like a drunk, frantically. So you have hammering close-ups, combined with woozy insecurity each time more than two people are in the frame. Twenty minutes into the retelling of fugitive Valjean, his monomaniacal pursuer Javert, the torch singers Fantine and Eponine and the rest, I wanted somebody to just nail the damn camera to the ground.

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

Amiable Gooding still smiles through it all, weathering the cold, physical abuse and implied racism, doing his best to make his audience believe that Snow Dogs isn't offensive mush. But he can't bring it off.

Bride Wars really does not capture the mood of the moment. It comes from a different time, a different planet.

A pair of decent performances does not a movie make, however, as Mazur and Giovinazzo are surrounded by fourth-tier actors (Ventresca and Steven Bauer) and spotty directing of a mediocre script.

Let's just say that not revealing this film's idiotic intricacies would be like not divulging that the fish is rotten lest the news spoil the surprise of food poisoning. [28 May 1999, Friday, p.A]

This medical miracle scene is by far the best in the film. Not because it is sexy or, perish the thought, Zen-like, but because it is pretty hilarious-a bizarre blend of the Marx Brothers, Three Stooges and Keystone Cops, with a little raunch dressing on the side. Unfortunately, the rest of the film is mostly a lot of grunting and groaning.

Instead of becoming bewitched, we're caught up in one more gallery of cliches and storytelling blunders. The Glitches of Eastwick. [03 May 1996, p.C2]

The film is organized in episodes, each one leading pretty much to the same conclusion, which is these are not folks we want contributing to our gene pool. Once that's understood, The New Age settles into a tiresome repetitiveness. Even its wittier turns-and, as "The Player" demonstrated, Tolkin has a caustic wit-play curiously flat. [23 Sept 1994, p.N]

A remake for schlemiels, or at least easy marks when it comes to formulaic Hollywood comedy. But the film's peculiar sluggishness and nagging hypocrisy probably won't get in the way of its popularity.

Ludicrous and overstuffed, it plows through the Big 10 of Biblical plagues.

Moving slowly these days, Reynolds does less than no acting in this role, and he’s still the best thing in Deal.

Against the rest of his dramatically flimsy crew, Snipes' sunglasses-at-midnight strut conveys an almost lifelike sheen. Almost. He's more alive than the movie, which is dead on arrival.

Director Burr Steers milks them dry, like an overeager farmer at milking time, which is a paradox since this is the wettest picture of 2010, what with the sea spray and Efron's tear ducts and the general metaphysical mist.

Wasikowska struggles to activate a vague notion of female disenfranchisement and victimhood, triumphant. She and Pattinson fill in as many blanks as they can, where they can.

The direction is on auto-drive, the dialogue lacks wit and the story logic is non-existent. [03 Nov 1995]

The Little Rascals is a nice-looking movie-shot in a nostalgic childhood haze by Richard Bowen-but watching it is almost numbing. It's the kind of empty gaudy show the misfit characters in Spheeris' good comedies might waste their time with.

This movie is glum, murky, dour, takes place mostly in the dark, doesn't make much sense and has a surprise climax so ridiculous you may watch it with perverse, astonished respect - the kind you might grant the Joint Chiefs of Staff if they showed up for a press conference wearing lampshades on their heads and yodeling. [17 Sept 1993, p.F]

Some actors steal scenes. Tom Green just gives them a bad odor. This self-infatuated goofball is far from the only thing wrong with the clumsy comedy.

The court scenes are rarely funny, either in the trash talk or the slapstick.

Everything's at stake yet nothing comes to much in Terminator Genisys.

Hutcherson spits his lines out as quickly as possible, which you appreciate, because the way the likable Johnson wrestles with his lines ("It looks like the liquefaction has tripled overnight!") you think, well, it's a living.

Terrible but, in its squealing way, sporadically fun-terrible.

This self-important movie can't save itself from being disheartening.

It's a screen adaptation of Busch's stage play of the same name, which never really went anywhere after its 1999 Los Angeles debut -- and doesn't go anywhere here.

Stumbles from cliche to cliche:

Birke's script is plainly straightforward, a simple supernatural chase story. It doesn't plumb the depths of what might make Slender Man scary, so Slender Man isn't scary at all.

About halfway through the violent, fantasy adventure Highlander, one character talks about how it was the custom during ancient times to throw babies into a pit of hungry dogs. Well, there were more than a few times during this hyperviolent film in which I felt as if I were a baby being thrown to a dog of a movie.

A childish and visually repetitive movie, ham-fisted, proselytizing and overtly simplified.

The film suggests Lohan probably (allegedly) should've gone after her agent the other night, not the mother of an ex-personal assistant.

Madonna stayed married to director Guy Ritchie just long enough to absorb his most grating cinematic instincts - shooting in every style, in an addled, shuffle-mode, falsely glamorizing way until all is chaos. And, astonishingly, boredom.

Ultraviolence is a funny thing, unless it’s not: Here, watching Martindale’s ranger character getting her face ripped off while being dragged along a gravel road isn’t a sight gag, and it isn’t an effective shock bit. It’s just sour. Composer Mark Mothersbaugh’s consciously ‘80s-vibe score has more personality than what’s on screen.

Superhero comic book movie with a script so feeble it might have been written with crayons.

An overblown clunker full of bad jokes, howling cliches and by-the-numbers action sequences.

No one seems particularly good at their jobs, but that’s beside the point. They’re silly and self-absorbed — mildly obnoxious more than anything — but rarely is their desperation funny.

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

Black or White may not be racist, exactly, but it patronizes its African-American characters up, down and sideways, and audiences of every ethnicity, background, hue and predilection can find something to dislike.

In White Noise, Hollywood and Michael Keaton try to make a decent thriller out of ghosts in the machine but come up with lousy reception and static.

This has to be one of the greatest casting coups and consequently blown opportunities of recent years...Streep isn't that funny in what is a frivolous role, and Barr is only mildly successful in her angry moments. [8 Dec 1989, p.A]

To become a true screen action hero outside the “Wonder Woman” realm, Gadot needs better material than this, and only when she gets to square off with Bhatt’s increasingly conflicted superhacker does Heart of Stone suggest a human pulse.

Gimme Shelter suffers from an acute case of the fakes. The speeches sound like speeches, and not good ones.

Lapica isn't yet enough of a writer or director (or an actor) to make the dramatic arc unpredictable in any way. It may be effective for some as therapy. It is far less so as cinematic storytelling.

It never feels like Brooks has a grasp on the material here, which careens aimlessly through Ella’s harried day-to-day, in a handsomely bland, serviceable style.

Aaron Russo's America: Freedom to Fascism can't even think straight, it's so mad.

If an erotic portrayal of John and Elizabeth's sexual inclinations was all director Adrian Lyne had wanted to accomplish, he might have succeeded. But he was not satisfied with that. [21 Feb 1986, p.A]

The sequel is about nothing more profound than an awkward teenager's desire for a really cute boyfriend. [12 March 1999, Friday, p.N]

Mountainhead is a talky movie and I tend to like talky movies. But at some point in the nearly two-hour running time, it just becomes boring.

Staggers and wanders and feels far longer than its 85 minutes, and it's best considered a calling card for better things to come.

It's a movie, and certain liberties are bound to be taken, but having Derek stop a moped-driving Brit on the street by pulling out some sort of identification and yelling, "CIA, I need your moped!" is not the way.

An almost terminally sappy youth romance.

In this bizarre tale of man among the apes and a psychiatrist among madmen -- an over-emotional hybrid of "Gorillas in the Mist" and "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" -- style buries substance.

A bad, bad movie...It's loud and dumb and it wastes a good cast on a ludicrous script.

But folks, this is a lousy script, blobby like the endlessly beheaded minions of the squad's chief adversary. It's not satisfying storytelling; the flashbacks roll in and out, explaining either too much or too little, and the action may be violent but it's not interesting.

Her Alibi, the disappointing pairing of two fine physical specimens, model Paulina Porizkova and Tom Selleck. Neither is a major acting talent, but both are eager to please and easy on the eyes. Yet, they have chosen a script that is so light that it fails my basic test for evaluating a movie: Would it be more interesting to listen to the actors talk at lunch than to hear them run through this script? Yes, it would.

I found Violent Night to be a joyless slay ride, not to mention verbally witless. There’s not much kick in seeing an R-rated version of “Home Alone,” and even that owed its home-invasion nastiness to Sam Peckinpah’s “Straw Dogs.”

This is the kind of movie that nice people call ambitious. Let's just leave it at that.

Sex Tape settles for violence when violent slapstick, a lot harder to finesse, was the implicit goal of the picture.

CJ7 is roughly as grating as that “Flubber” remake.

A thin, largely unfunny comedy that marries lazy filmmaking with bad timing.

The poster’s the funniest thing about the project: Johnson, sporting a pair of fairy wings larger than his forearms, glaring at the camera.

Despite valiant efforts from Czerny and from the fine stage actress Vilma Silva, who plays one of Walsch's many saviors, the result would qualify as a blandly inspirational amateur hour if the running time weren't closer to two.

This ultimately disappointing comedy starts reasonably strong, delivers a few good laughs, then rolls over and plays dead.

It's reductive, insanely violent slapstick, but that's the phenomenon in a nutshell.

A cutesy, heavy-handed morality tale that contains nary a believable moment.

Illegal Tender echoes "A History of Violence," another gritty film that explores escaping a criminal past. But the vast vapidity behind Illegal Tender's ill-conceived story line is far harder to overcome.

What’s so maddening about A Quiet Place Part II is the unused potential. Krasinski opens up the world and timeline of the film, but doesn’t utilize it in any meaningful way, introducing new ideas but then jettisoning the opportunity. Again and again he falls back on more of the same old tricks from “A Quiet Place,” which was a bore to begin with.

This was a mission that should have been aborted long ago.

Williams' grimace is starting to look desperate. Then again, no one comes off well in director Ken Kwapis' handling of this greasy screenplay.

John Waters is back with this awfully bawdy, never sexy, rarely funny, actually boring, one-note sex comedy.

The real problem is that there isn't enough whimsy in the world to save this unengaging story.

In the end you don't believe what you're watching, and you don't care. This party is a drag.

The Ten changes tone every few minutes, ranging from lowbrow gross-out gags to elevated language to a big, sloppy musical number.

The screenplay by Dana Fox (she was one of the rewriters of "27 Dresses") devolves into a series of humiliating pranks that always give the upper narrative hand to the male lead. Talk about depressing. I mean, that's what male screenwriters are for--to unfairly stack the deck against the female leads.

It's a distraction: a buzz in your head that won't go away. [31 March 1995, p.HI]

All the obligatory plot elements are there. Love and loss, anger and forgiveness, illness and death. But they never flow together to make a coherent story. Instead, they just pop up whenever the script is in trouble. Which is all the time.

This new Friday the 13th, unquestionably savvier and snappier than the original "Friday the 13th," though just as useless, is a needed return to simplicity.

Not so much character-driven as character-dragged--against its will.

The Nome King looks like a moveable Mt. St. Helens and he alone is magical. In fact, he blows Dorothy and her tacky-looking friends off the screen. So we end up liking the Nome King and hating Dorothy and her crowd, which I doubt was the intention of the L. Frank Baum series. [21 Jun 1985, p.1]