Jaws is looking a bit long in the tooth these days. As the venerable series (b. 1975) sets off on its fourth paddle around the pool, Jaws the Revenge is definitely dragging its tail fins. Give a poor fish a break.

Its humor stems precisely from our enjoying its lead character's rotten behavior.

A criminal waste of talent.

Mayall`s hyper portrayal of Fred, while psychologically sound, is dramatically torture.

Ultimately Suburbicon is woefully underwritten. Gardner and Maggie are mere sketches, a set of facial tics and accessories masquerading as real characters.

Short Circuit is an obvious WarGames ripoff in which a robot steals every scene from wooden performances by the always-too-eager-to-please Steve Guttenberg and the usually likable Ally Sheedy.

Such a low-class, low-laughs rip-off that it makes "There's Something About Mary" resemble a Noel Coward comedy of manners. [23 April 1999, Friday, p.A]

Nobly intended and about half baked, School Ties is a slightly glorified ``Afterschool Special`` that might function as an introduction to the evils of anti-Semitism for sheltered teens.

Largely a disappointment.

There’s not a thrill to be found in this ostensible thriller, a rote kidnapping exercise taped together with digital blood spatter and an overly dramatic score, vaguely gesturing at global crises from five years ago.

Baldwin's Kudrow is a one-dimensional, humorless variation on his corporate tyrant in "Glengarry Glen Ross." When the writers attempt to add color -- like with a female office worker who blathers about caffeine and Bart Simpson -- the results induce cringing. [3 Apr 1998, p.A]

Barely has there been a group of more smug and obnoxious characters in a single film than in St. Elmo`s Fire.

Run-of-the-mill sitcom-y in its pedestrian writing and uninspired direction.

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

Although several of her (Breillat's) previous films were intriguing and provocative, this one seems styled more as raw material for satire on "Mad TV" or "Saturday Night Live."

What's remarkable about the remake is its nastiness.

A dismal kids' comedy in which all creativity stopped after casting lookalikes for the old rascals was completed.

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]

A dreadful witches' comedy with the only tolerable moment coming when Bette Midler presents a single song.

This is nothing more than a half-hour Ramar of the Jungle episode, blown up to motion-picture length.

What is remarkable, though, is just how unbelievably unbelievable this inspired-by-true-life tale is.

It's got the sex. It's got the violence. And, most important, it has an array of pot-centered jokes that might be funny to someone under the influence of an illegal substance. [30 Apr 1999]

Of all of its lies, the worst may be that Color of Night perpetuates the notion that people who seek therapy are more dangerous to others than those who don't. The film also makes a direct link between sexual appetite and violence.

It’s a pity Grizzly II: Revenge isn’t giddy-bad, the way Tommy Wiseau’s “The Room” delights so many. But it’s here, it’s seriously disoriented and disorienting.

Brooks' own timing as a director doesn't seem up to its usual snuff. Light-years stretch out between the set-up of a gag and its payoff, and for a director who has always depended on the quantity of his jokes rather than the quality, the gap is fatal. When a character is introduced as "Pizza the Hut," and then shown as a melting mass of mozzarella and tomato sauce, the result is to turn a fairly clever pun into something thuddingly obvious and vaguely nauseating. [24 Jun 1987, p.3]

If it weren't for Kate Lyn Sheil, who has a couple of scenes as a blase Brooklyn waitress inexplicably ending up in the protagonist's bed, 'The Comedy' might well have qualified as the worst film of 2012.

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.

Let's make this simple: If you spend money on Soul Plane, you've been played.

As if by deliberate and vaguely sadistic design, Hoodwinked Too! Hood Vs. Evil leeches the fun clean out of the first "Hoodwinked" (2005).

An awful vampire comedy from John Landis ("Animal House," "The Blues Brothers") that is enlivened only by the eroticism of French actress Anne Parillaud ("La Femme Nikita") who is willing to disrobe for her first Hollywood film and major payday. She plays a vampire who feasts on Italian mobsters in Pittsburgh, falling in love with Anthony LaPaglia along the way. The neck-biting and gunplay are gross. Don Rickles is a sore thumb as a mob attorney. [25 Sept 1992, p.C]

This one's a certifiable soul-sucker, dining out on its characters' venalities while wagging a finger at the horror, the horror.

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

Plagued by continuity problems, ham-fisted storytelling and a problematic voiceover by Da Brat, Civil Brand feels less like a prison movie than a prison sentence.

Rarely has a comedy been so empty of laughs. If this film makes any money, it all should go to the person who thought up the title. [18 Sept 1987, p.A]

Some movies are a joy. Some are a chore. And some are sheer torture. A good example of the latter is Virus. [17 January 1999, Metro Chicago, p.8]

The film is madly, compulsively overcontrolled, from its funereal pacing to its pristine red, white and blue color scheme; those moments when it loses its dignity are irresistibly comic, and in this grim context, infinitely precious.[16 Mar 1990, p.B]

The movie`s underlying message seems to be that racial harmony can best be achieved by allowing white boys to beat the stuffing out of minority kids- that`s what really earns their love and respect. There must be a better way.

Predictably impersonal and uninspired.

A soft-core sex comedy that keeps throwing out comic variations on the idea of the line between gay and straight sexuality.

What a letdown! The remake of the 1935 classic ''The Bride of Frankenstein'' with rock star Sting as the doctor and Jennifer Beals as the reconstructed bride is a complete failure in telling its principal story.

Limps along on a squirm-inducing fish-out-of-water formula that goes nowhere and goes there very, very slowly.

The polite word for all this is "repurposing," a euphemism for "hauling someone else's garbage."

Selleck's persona can seem coherent and mildly pleasant in the airless, miniature world of series television, but when he walks into the larger, more physical world of movies he melts away. There's too great a disparity between his bulk and his whining delivery, and he carries himself awkwardly on screen, as if he knew he was taking up too much space. [3 Feb 1989, p.A]

Arkin in particular can barely hide his lack of enthusiasm for the material. Some of the looks he shoots his co-stars appear to contain a secret code of some kind, deciphered as: 'Well, at least I'm in 'Argo.'"

The director is first-timer Mike Bigelow. Nothing's paced or shaped for maximum payoff; the shooting and editing rhythms add only clutter and noise, and the slapstick is strictly of the skull-banging, ear-splitting variety.

The lighting is appropriately dim, the music is reasonably clever, and they get in a few nice scares in the beginning. But as the movie wears on and Angela’s desperation grows, any glimmer of fun seeps away. And we’re left watching the same old grim game of cat and mouse.

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

Following on the abject failure of Bonfire of the Vanities, director De Palma seems to have seriously lost his way. [14 Aug 1992, p.C]

Boring and banal, overwrought and undercooked, Hudson Hawk is beyond bad. [24 May 1991]

Like most sequels, this one is worse than the original. The special effects look cheaper, the villains aren't as evil and the action sequences have all the vitality and creativity of the later, lethargic Karate Kid movies. [28 Mar 1997, p.D]

There is really no one to like in this film.

As Vaughn's therapist mother, Sissy Spacek comes off best. But she's a rare bird of whom it truly can be said: She's always good. No matter how grim the material.

Slow and dragging, Pootie Tang is worse than a below-average sketch-to-screen Saturday Night Live film.

A movie about a pair of garbagemen that falls into the general category of refuse. [28 Aug 1990, p.4C]

Marked for Death is, even by the xenophobic standards of the recent action genre, uncommonly racist and misogynistic.

A complete disaster, almost certain to kill any more sequels. Chase waltzes through a series of boring costumes and cliches as he journeys to the South to claim a mansion as an inheritance only to find it's a hot property. The script here is anything but a hot property. [24 March 1989, p.A]

Not only does American Outlaws distort history, but the filmmakers have created a dull, one-dimensional pop icon out of James' complex character and legend.

An abysmal, embarrassing sequel to the adult-talking baby movies. [5 Nov 1993, p.C]

In code, Wonder Wheel dances along the edge of the writer-director’s off-screen life, namely the allegations by Dylan Farrow, Allen’s adopted daughter, of sexual molestation, and Allen’s controversial marriage to Soon-Yi Previn, the adopted daughter of Allen’s then-partner Mia Farrow.

When the film at last reaches its supposedly shocking conclusion, it resembles an overinflated balloon that has finally burst. It is a film that demands that you pay close attention, then rewards none of your diligence. [12 Apr 1991, p.4]

You watch the movie in a dumbfounded stupor. Why on earth was it made? [26 March 1999, Friday, p.A]

The violence of Class of 1999 is so extreme, so redundant and so meaningless that Lester ends by nullifying his own message - it seems that brutality in the name of law and order is wrong, but that brutality in the name of entertainment is just fine. [11 May 1990, p.E]

Think about the worst movie ideas you've had in your life, the ones so embarrassing they make you wince. Now imagine this: a modernized version of Shakespeare's "Macbeth" titled Scotland, Pa.

It’s hard to believe that a lineup so stellar could generate so few laughs, but there it is.

In the new wave of kiddie animal movies -- "Babe," "Black Beauty," "Gordy," "Fluke," "Roan Inish" and all the rest -- Dunston Checks In is valuable only as a new standard of screenwriting ineptitude. Don't play it again, Sam, at least not with this bunch.

Craven has proven himself a talented director of horror films on several occasions, from Last House on the Left to A Nightmare on Elm Street. But this time he's chosen a project that plays not at all to his abilities, which lie with the creation of isolated, disturbing images rather than with the careful sustaining of suspense through story-telling. [13 Oct 1986, p.5C]

Tired ethnic stereotyping abounds in the Striptease script, which is at a loss for any kind of drama between Moore's dances. Not for a second do we care about her as a mother, wife or working woman. Only her first dance in a modified man's suit approaches the energy of the much better Flashdance.

The mayhem in The Mummy feels desperate, mistimed, grueling in the wrong way (the film's violence is infinitely less appropriate for preteens than that of "Wonder Woman").

Van Damme himself, a graduate of the blank-stare school of acting, is so without emotional inflection on the screen that his most affecting moment in this film, if one is to judge from a preview audience's reaction, is when he drops a bathrobe for a couple of seconds of magnificent gluteal exposure.

It's a long slog, not because what the film says is provocative but because the technique is as slack as the writing.

Called upon to do little more than imitate the mannerisms of their French predecessors, Nolte and Short seem hemmed in and desperately uncomfortable. [27 Jan 1989, p.A]

The theory seems to be that if you indiscriminately toss in enough familiar ingredients, you get soup. But Graveyard Shift is more like lumpy water. [29 Oct 1990, p.5C]

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.

A wish fulfillment fantasy of staggering silliness, both smirkingly cutesy and gratingly offensive, this is one for the movie ash heap.

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

At the end of 83 unmerciful minutes, audiences will be exclaiming, "Dude, I can't believe I sat through that movie!?" Stick to the trailer.

The sad truth is, I can say nothing to recommend this film.

Better Off Dead, a seemingly teenage comedy that wasn't good enough to be released during the prime summer play dates, is utterly devoid of appeal. [15 Oct 1985, p.C2]

It's a mystery why two bona fide comic stars, working very, very hard to keep this thing from tanking, couldn't pressure their collaborators for another rewrite or three.

It`s shoddy, lazy and numbingly stupid.

It's hard to believe how bad this movie is.

A shockingly bad film that is utterly lacking in laughs and turns out to be little more than a big-screen adaptation of the TV sitcom's pilot. [15 Oct 1993, p.C2]

Gordon, she of the Selma Diamond voice and mournful glare, is by far the most interesting aspect in a picture that might be termed unreleasably dull, if it weren't in fact in release at the moment en route to DVD.

There's some solid talent here, but Gottlieb's overemphatic direction reduces them all to broad caricature--the kind of crazed mugging that isn't often seen outside the boundaries of Saturday morning kiddie shows. [13 Feb 1987, p.A]

Director Ardolino and his unnamed colleagues should be given a couple of swift raps across the palm with a ruler.

Death Wish 3 may be the first movie where the director and both costars have publicly denounced elements of the film. Director Winner has said he doesn't approve of the film's philosophy of taking the law into one's own hands. Bronson has been quoted as saying the film is too violent for his taste.

A shockingly bad film because of its total misuse of two talented performers, Sean Penn and Madonna. [5 Sept 1986, p.A]

Good Luck Chuck is this year’s low-ender to beat.

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

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.

Haven't we seen the oh-my-gosh-my-spouse-is-secretly-an-assassin-but-you-know-a-nice-one routine once too often?

Good performances in bad movies are nothing new, but it's sad that Moore's first major cinematic outing scrapes the bottom of the melodramatic barrel.

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]

With last week's elections in South Africa finally pointing the way toward a dismantlement of apartheid, it can't be said that the timing of "The Power of One" is particularly astute. But this is a film with no particular relationship to the real world in any case. [27 March 1992, p.M]

The Devil Inside joins a long, woozy-camera parade of found-footage scare pictures, among them "The Blair Witch Project," the "Paranormal Activity" films and certain wedding videos that won't go away.

Scream 7 is an unfortunate tarnish on this otherwise sturdy franchise’s legacy.

O'Neal and Hardaway are likable enough in limited roles; Cousy seems a little ill at ease. But forget all that. Blue Chips is only a triumph of marketing. Its casting suggests an official basketball picture, but its script belongs on the bench. [18 Feb 1994, p.C2]

Another problem is that this "Magoo" can't seem to figure out if it's for kids or adults. The plot's too simple for adults, with hardly an inside joke or double entendre thrown in for good measure, yet it may be too confusing for younger kids. [25 Dec 1997, p.D2]