"We had fun, didn't we?" asks Prince at the end, just before he goes to heaven. It's nice that somebody did. [04 Jul 1986, p.3C]

The only two onscreen items with any star quality belong to Simpson, and they're barely contained in shirts that seem to be holding on for dear life. Comedy fans, beware; breast fans, rejoice!

The overall picture doesn't have the kind of true wow factor that would make this one stand out from the rest of the pack.

The Canyons may not work, and the sex (as well as the synthesized glop on the soundtrack) may be tragically unhip, but it was made by a director who still cares.

On the whole, I’d go with the 2018 basketball comedy “Uncle Drew” over either “Jams.” One-joke movies, all three. But it helps when the gags don’t stop at the reference point and dribble in place while the clock runs out.

It's a pretty entertaining, extremely good-looking cinematic blip--not important, not outstanding, but better than a lot of PG stuff that attempts to reach both parents and their 8-year-old kids.

It makes the viewer wonder whether Circuit would have been stronger as a documentary instead of the well-intentioned, overlong, intermittently entertaining but flawed feature that it is.

Plays so flat, so to close its "movie message" formula, that it seems as if we've seen this movie before.

Might be justified as "mindless fun" if it weren't for the acute lack of fun in its 93 minutes.

Criminal feels like the kind of high-concept, unapologetically preposterous action movies of the heyday in the '80s and '90s. If that's your thing, it's a hoot.

Shottas exists purely in the realm of rasta-music-video fakery.

The film may be bad-and mad-but it's not predictable.

Calling a sequel Are We Done Yet? is like calling it "Enough Already."

Sucks a whole lot of talented people into a wormhole of lousy. The film either needed to be a lot wittier to make up for the way it looks, or a lot better-looking to compensate for the funny it isn't.

The movie suffers from various technical difficulties - like choppy editing and songs that get cut off mid-groove - and in the end everything collapses in a heap. [05 Nov 1990, p.4C]

The glibness of Wiesen's freshman effort wouldn't be a problem if the wit was there.

A director can get away with stick-figure characterizations in a 30-minute television show, but here it looks like he got Siemaszko to assume a browbeaten expression and Tyson to do his best imitation of a Neanderthal, then told them to "freeze" for the duration of the project. That may be filming, but it's not directing.

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

Like an episode of "Friends" where the entire cast has been given aphrodisiacs and locked up.

The younger Provenzano, while under indictment for racketeering and tax evasion, made his contribution to our mob lesson by writing, directing and starring in This Thing of Ours, another installment in the long line of bada-bings and fuggetabouits.

Predictably impersonal and uninspired.

A miserable ripoff of The Karate Kid with three whitebread young-uns taking lessons from their Chinese grandfather on how to be upright and horizontal ninja warriors. They get their kicks trying to knock off a Steven Seagal imitation who is running drugs.

The most joyless revisionism since Disney's "The Lone Ranger.

The movie has a big, warm, fuzzy heart - and not a bellylaugh in sight. [30 March 1992, p.5]

The pathos: considerable. The sight gags, involving Crystal puking chili dog on a kid's face, or the grandson with an imaginary friend peeing and causing an X Games skateboarder to wipe out: artless. The results: tolerably amusing.

The Secret of My Success is crushingly bland. Bland, yes, but somewhat chilling, too--particularly in the way Ross and his screenwriters (Jim Cash, Jack Epps Jr. and A.J. Carothers) zero in on their teenage target audience by indulging in the grubbiest of grubby fantasies.

Seethes with cruel lust and brainy fancy.

The vocal characterizations aren't the problem here; the script and the animation are the problems, and in feature animation, you can't arrange more significant problems than those.

Replete with audience-insulting writing and blatantly hateful jokes, storytelling like this makes most video game plots look like "Moby Dick."

It's just a mediocre action movie, poorly edited and larded with a terrible musical score, based on a video game. Nothing new there.

Despite its admonitory tone, Belly spends so much time caressing images of material wealth, female exploitation, drugs and murder that one has to worry about its effect on youngsters. But with its uneven storytelling and acting glitches, Belly's dubious moral stance may be the easiest part of the film to stomach. [04 Nov 1998, p.2]

It's mostly noise and splurch and, as I mentioned, aaaaarrrrggggghhhhh!

Perhaps the series is simply getting cynical and tired.

The film is a rogue hunk of hooey.

It's nice to see a movie in love with New York City, but That Awkward Moment sets such a low bar for Jason's redemption it becomes a drag.

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

It's beautifully shot on Cephallonian locations by superb landscape photographer John Toll.

An offbeat, genial western parody that has some surprisingly effective low-key humor. [30 Aug 1991, p.C2]

Weathers turns out to be a disappointingly weak lead whose low-key likability doesn't make up for his lack of anger and drive-crucial attributes for any action hero. And Baxley is surprisingly stingy with his action sequences.

Road House is startling because of the intensity of its violence and because of Swayze`s mindless posturing. A young star has sold himself to become a pinup boy.

The storytelling proceeds in such a halting manner, with De Niro's speeches going on and on and on, that before long you'd kill for an easy scare.

The story is resolved a bit too easily, but that works for the world of the film, which is sanded down, buffed out, a bucolic, "Steel Magnolias"-inspired fantasy land of wide front porches, charming flower shops and the mega-famous rock stars that wander into them.

Kollek's fondness for whimsical plot turns adds still more random elements to a movie that at times seems edited by a blindfolded monkey.

The best thing about star and co-writer David Spade's Dickie Roberts, Former Child Star is the end-title sequence, a big, sassy sing-along in which dozens of old TV child stars spew out defiant jokes about their old careers and fame's fickle fingers.

A muddy, dreamlike Portuguese offering.

It sticks in the craw. The whole movie does.

A pleasant, leisurely 71 minutes, frequently beguiling thanks to Gurwitch's soft-sell version of the urbane, Second City-esque female noodge.

The stalwart American hero of Turistas comes off as a dislikable blank in the hands of Josh Duhamel, of the TV series "Las Vegas." More relaxed is Melissa George, who co-stars as the Aussie.

As generic as its title, College Road Trip feels like a first draft, the one the studio brings to the rewrite team that, in this case, never got hired.

This film has so many good ideas, it tends to seem better after you've left the theater. But the mock TV stuff is just too faux to be funny.

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]

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

I found the mythology of I Am Number Four vague and sloppy.

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.

Nothing is harder and more elusive than successful slapstick onscreen. Nothing.

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]

This is a comic book movie, its outcome as predictable as it is satisfying, which is part of its charm. [25 May 1988, p.7]

The movie also features Doug E. Doug (Cool Runnings) as a bumbler of an FBI agent, a fluffy gray-and-white alley cat as D.C., and a climax overloaded with car crashes, pratfalls and forced mayhem.

Stolen Summer is no disaster, though. It's merely one more misfire fortunate enough to attract actors like Bonnie Hunt and Aidan Quinn, who almost make it work.

Faces the same problem of all sex-themed films, in that cinematic sex is often unsexy.

It should be obvious to anyone at this point in time that Kid is getting a little long in the tooth. As Miyagi might say: Those who keep milking same idea . . . end up killing cash cow.

What is it about vampires that brings out the worst in filmmakers these days? [16 Aug 1996, p.2]

Beeman and Tolkin drain every trace of real life friction from the story line, pumping it up instead with the standard Hughes synthetics: kids who are preternaturally smart, sophisticated and poised (Haim's best friend, played by Corey Feldman, has a swagger that suggests Robert Mitchum at his cockiest); adults who are monstrous, cretinous and ultimately pathetic. [07 July 1988, p.3C]

Though it looks bright and the young actors have a couple of sweet moments, the picture is almost unremittingly punishing, hammering home its "be yourself" message with all the gentle persuasiveness of a Marine drill sergeant.

The original dealt with a collision of intellect, destiny and the soul, this sequel is content to limit its concern to survival. Darwin might not approve. [16 Feb 1989, p.2C]

Director Paul McGuigan ("Lucky Number Slevin") has never been keen on plot logic, and that might be fine here if he offered anything other than Peter Sova's lush images of Hong Kong.

It's just a devastatingly sad and terrible story about two brothers who make bad choices, suffer the consequences and lose the last shreds of family they have left. No amount of 11th hour twists, reveals or bigger ideas can shake that inescapable feeling of dread and sorrow.

The film becomes far too explicit much too quickly, as if Friedkin, frustrated by his inability to build a genuine suspense, had decided to move to the main course as quickly as possible. [27 Apr 1990, p.B]

Filling his movie with bright colors and giddy energy, Branagh has made a labor of love in which the labor is all too apparent.

The film is actually fairly well made, with a brisk tempo pace, a professional look and enough competently staged action.

Every time Charlize Theron is on screen, the movie gets crazy campy, and therefore at least somewhat interesting.

A surprisingly well-made action movie with a definite directorial personality. [03 Sep 1986, p.7C]

The way My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3 has been staged, filmed and edited, every new scene and each exchange has a way of being undermined by the filmmaking choices.

One of the few video game movies to truly re-create the gaming experience -- from the three-dimensional maps to the structure of encountering increasingly grisly and dangerous foes at higher levels of play.

Everyone knows how the battles will turn out. It's what's between them that raises Masters Of The Universe ever so slightly above the mediocre.

The same bland vision of teendom that's become inescapable on the small and big screens.

Someone should have told Steve Martin that, prodigiously talented though he is, his over-the-top caricature of a displaced mobster could not sustain an entire movie, particularly one as scattershot as My Blue Heaven. [20 Aug 1990, p.2]

Though Stealth's strengths are obvious -- high-tech marvels and a good cast -- so are its flaws. At its worst moments, a mad robot seems to have taken over the movie, too.

By embracing a static plot, making Gerardo a depressed Robotron and Mexico City a ghost town, Hernandez only succeeds in alienating us, even while focusing on the most universal of themes: Breaking up is hard to do.

At what point might animators be arrested for doing work so ugly it causes aesthetic blindness in millions of younglings?

It's a mess, but wow, is it ever a fun, fascinating mess. Those are always so much more thrilling than any of the formulaic superhero movies that parade through multiplexes all year.

Jumper, the film, goes everywhere and nowhere.

Easygoing but surprisingly likable comedy.

It’s lousy, and a frantic bore, squandering its on-screen talent and making bland visual hash of its preening, recreational slaughter.

Well, it’s a dud. Nothing quite clicks.

Fox's cleavage is the only camera object that catches Bay's attention for more than a millisecond.

Throws its obvious predecessor, "Waiting to Exhale," into relief, making that 1995 syrupy revenge fantasy look positively Shakespearean next to the moronic Two Can Play That Game.

Knows when to take itself seriously and when to laugh at itself -- even if its audience isn't laughing along at every gag.