A dreary, old-fashioned kids' baseball fantasy.

Its optimism has a certain naive charm, though it also seems one step removed from a clinical condition. [28 May 1993, p.C]

It is difficult to decide what is more annoying. The complete lack of execution in this film, (despite the presence of some very talented actors), or the realization that these lame screenwriters were so devoid of original ideas, they resorted to picking at the carcass of a tale that has been done and redone to death. [11 Aug 1995, p.28]

A dirge of unfunny scatological material, techno-anxiety and child endangerment masquerading as familial bonding. Settle in for the "Long Haul," because this is one bumpy, miserable ride.

I have a sneaking suspicion that Running Scared could become a cult classic.

The first half hour of Hot Chick, before the switch, plays like soft-core porno from the '60s. The rest plays like a bad "Saturday Night Live" sketch stretched to the breaking point.

Depending on the speed of your gag reflex, "+batteries not included" is either a 21st Century "Lassie" or the worst piece of smarm to come along since "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus."

Has one point to make: Islam is a bad, baaaaaaaaad religion, and it's a miracle you're even alive and reading this, so intent most Muslims are on your destruction.

None of it is funny. It’s all pain and no funny.

So derivative and crass that it's far more entertaining to try to think of the dozens of films it's ripping off than it is to take any of it at face value.

Are teenagers really supposed to identify with a clumsy caricature such as Charlie, who, in spite of all his expulsions and school crimes, comes across as a gawping, perpetually surprised infant in an adult body?

It's a deeply, creepily dishonest piece of work. [27 Oct 1989, p.G]

A bad script. Bad casting. What`s left? How about the guilty party you can spot within minutes? Add a complete lack of suspense to that list and it ensures that Blue City will be on this critic`s list of the year`s worst movies.

Given the grosses of the original, a sequel to Teen Wolf was inevitable-and it was inevitable, too, that the sequel would lose the quality of innocence and unconscious artfulness that made the first film work. The material has been broken down, analyzed and reassembled with scientific precision; what was instinctive in the original has become self-conscious and calculated in the followup, and the spirit is gone.

Laughing at the freaks and then feeling bad about it is the sole reason for the existence of this pale little film.

We keep waiting for the movie to stand for something more than a manual of cruelty, but it never does, even though director Cimino makes a heavy-handed attempt through Western locations and Red River Valley on the soundtrack to recall the heroism of another age. [05 Oct 1990, p.C]

In a film which can't seem to decide whether it's comedy or drama, folksy or sinister, every scene is played for ambivalence. The result is a definite maybe. [23 Sep 1988, p.L]

Big problem straight off: tone. The violence isn't slapsticky; it's just violent.

The confusing screenplay, by John Eskow and Richard Rush, makes a few fumbling attempts to get a plot going (Downey crash-lands and has to be rescued by Gibson; later, their CIA bosses try to frame them for drug smuggling), but mainly the movie tries to get by on attitude, which is a mistake when Mel Gibson is its main perpetrator. [10 Aug 1990]

Max Payne offers max pain along with min invention, and the only thing that keeps it out of the bottom of the Dumpster--it’s more of a top-of-the-Dumpster movie--is the presence of Mark Wahlberg.

The exhausting slapstick violence is the film's chief variation, and it's no fun at all.

The film's rhythm is sluggish, with gore strategically placed in case the audience nods off. [08 May 1990, p.3C]

Clifford can muster no interest in the cardboard characters or absurd plot developments, which leaves Gleaming the Cube to limp along listlessly between indifferently filmed skateboard demonstrations.

Otis` character is one of the most stupid ever placed on film. She mouths platitudes at best; she walks slowly and wears revealing clothes at all other times. If she`s a lawyer, she cheated on her bar exam.

About as sharp an updated version of the original as is Jennifer Lopez's song of the same name a modern, Latina version of the Beatles classic.

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]

It's a wholly passive performance, and one that touches not at all on Pryor's special gifts. This man desperately needs a new agent.

There are some cute visuals now and then, but overall Good Burger may raise your blood pressure and, if you suffer through the entire 94 minutes, perhaps even lower your IQ.

Red One is the holiday fantasy built on retribution, punishment and crushed hopes we deserve right now.

Serves up horrendous lead acting, murky cinematography, bland atmosphere, unengaging romance, mug-crazy cameo performances, bash-on-the-head satire and ill-timed slapstick gags that look like outtakes from a Bozo the Clown show gone berserk. [20 Oct 1995]

Called upon to blend the fey and the fiendish, the usually fine Cage is reduced to acting like some kind of combination of Dudley Moore and John Carradine. Throughout, though, he seems to be enjoying it; I can't imagine why. [2 June 1989, Friday, p.E]

There is nothing to redeem this movie, and no real reason to see it.

The Sisters isn't just bad Chekhov; it's bad Chekhov modernized and then plunked in front of a camera.

A dim-witted remake of the great "Bonnie and Clyde," with Estevez playing a decent young man saddled with an unfair criminal record that prevents him from getting a job. [9 Jan 1987, p.AC]

For the record, this movie stars George Burns and Charlie Schlatter, and its one distinguishing feature is a consistent tastelessness, which still doesn't manage to make it much fun. [08 Apr 1988, p.H]

Crass but imponderable, bizarrely mixing glowingly back-lit sentimentality with stomach-churning violence and juvenile sex jokes.

I saw Resurgence an hour and a half ago, and I feel like an alien wiped my memory clean already.

Some may enjoy the cacophonous, raunchy, lowest-common-denominator dreck that The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard has to offer. To those I say, godspeed. But it’s undeniable that the actors, the audiences and the filmmakers all deserve better.

Not a remake of the Stewart Granger-Deborah Kerr epic, this film has been made, so obviously and calculatedly, to capitalize on the success of ''Raiders of the Lost Ark'' and ''Romancing the Stone,'' seeking their crafty harmony of action, romance and humor. The result is action so ludicrous that it falls consistently between thrilling and amusing and never comes in sufficient amounts of either.

Rush Hour 3 is DOA.

Viewers who don’t flee the intrusively uplifting soundtrack and choking sentiment get just what that opening promised: a by-the-numbers, based-in-reality inspirational sports movie, thick with overwhelming pride and nostalgia for small-town farmland America.

The result is a weak "Carrie" versus Jason finale after Jason has impaled about eight young people, mostly women. The filmmakers have mastered the blood but not the tedium of all of the predictable killings. Nor have they eliminated the "hate-women" subtext to the entire series of films. [20 May 1988, p.A]

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

Aside from providing a lesson about movies with titles that provide their own bad review, Say It Isn't So gives low humor a bad name.

Poltergeist II offers no fresh hooting interest. To put it simply, there is nothing to like about Poltergeist II.

The whole movie seems designed to point out that there are far better things in life than being a ski instructor in Aspen, Colo.

None of the characters has been written with any personality, and none of the actors succeeds in discovering any. [05 Mar 1993]

A talky, plodding film that seems likely to bore children and adults in equal measure. [11 Dec 1992, p.B2]

Wish Upon isn't over-the-top wacky or campy, and in fact, feels slightly low-energy at times, but it's the kind of simple filmmaking coupled with absolutely insane writing and plot points that make it an ideal candidate for so-bad-it's-good viewing.

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.

For all its promise of lively trailer-park humor, Joe Dirt digs, then lies in its own grave, killed by blah characters, lame jokes and cliches you can see coming a mile away.

Kalifornia is that deadliest of combinations: a pretentious B movie. It repeatedly smacks the viewer in the face and then pretends that it has some intellectual reason for doing so. [03 Sep 1993]

DeLuca is not a director. And he isn`t much of a solo writer either. Maybe 1 percent of his gags work.

With its general spirit of tabloid scandalmongering and frequent cutaways to an oddly enhanced Melanie Griffith in scanty panties, the point of reference seems less Victorian fiction than Victoria's Secret.

With The Loss of Sexual Innocence, director Mike Figgis reaches an almost comical low in the pursuit of what appears to be a desperate need to express deeper, uh, depth. Figgis' deliberate obfuscation may delight him, but it leaves the viewer mystified and bitter. [18 Jun 1999]

Devotees of awful filmmaking can't go wrong with this one.

Could have been a funny movie. There are a few truths about food-service that McKittrick gets right but doesn't fully exploit.

Verhoeven does not explore the dark side, but merely exploits it, and that makes all the difference in the world.

The performers never find the right spin on the dialogue, and DeSimone never finds the right rhythm in his pacing, to make these deliberate cliches take off into comedy. A stodgy literalness in DeSimone`s approach suffocates the joke.

Comedy doesn't have to be refined or original to be entertaining, but it ought to have a little flair. The gags of this "Academy" are blunt and literal, delivered without the careful set-ups or rhythms that, in the hands of a Laurel and Hardy, can make physical comedy into its own kind of poetry. [22 Mar 1988, p.C3]

Playing the title role as well as the Dream role, real-life Elvis tribute artist Blake Rayne is more convincing when he's singing than when he isn't. But he has little to explore beyond bashful smiles.

Its message is that if we get to know each other, everything will be okay. Admirable, that. But the way in which it is delivered is so hampered by stereotypes and lathered in cute that one is never able to trust its intentions or swallow its story. [06 Nov 1987, p.56C]

It has a lack of ambition and energy that is almost total: It's the most this movie can do to roll over and ask for a little more lotion on its back. [22 July 1987]

Jake Speed isn't a movie. It's just a financial deal.

Fawcett isn`t half bad--she works hard and doesn`t commit any egregious technical faults--but she doesn`t have the resources to give her slimly written character a sufficiently commanding inner life, and it`s difficult to get beyond her sunny, fashion-model good looks. It`s another sad case of the clown who wanted to play Hamlet.

Williams does a fine job with her role. I was pulling for her throughout her dreary journey. It's too bad it didn't get anywhere.

Its jokes aren't funny. Its sloppy direction comes courtesy of Jordan Brady, who made "The Third Wheel," another reportedly failed comedy gathering cobwebs at Miramax.

Raffill and Steve Feke take credit for the original screenplay, though Steven Spielberg might have a different opinion. [15 Aug 1988, p.2]

Morgan Spurlock is a living, breathing cautionary tale. Take a good, long look, kids: This is what happens when society validates really annoying people.

A sad, wasted movie.

It breaks director Billy Wilder's most important movie commandment: Thou Shall Not Bore. It's just not funny.

Rosenbush strives for a difficult blend of spoof and sincerity with Zen Noir. In the spirit of rebirth, let's assume that the next time he makes it, it'll turn out fine.

Reynolds retains his skittery comic timing, and Jackman (while tonally a little lost here) certainly put in his time with a personal trainer. But there isn’t a single shot in Levy’s film that flows excitingly into the next one.

A rather wan version of "Jurassic Park" - a series of setups featuring humans being picked off by bigger, faster and stronger carnivores.

It's just a watery, undeservedly smug update of the low-budget, kids-stranded-in-the-sticks bloodfests of the 1970s and '80s.

An angry, violent and despairing film, without much of a point other than that existence can be angry and despairing and memory is a prison. As a piece of art, entertainment or cultural ephemera, it is indeed bold, but it is significant not for what it says about Capone, but rather what it says about Trank, and the ongoing saga of his career.

The story wanders all over the place without purpose other than to shock with violence.

99 minutes of excruciating "reality."

Most of the humor is aimed at 14-year-olds.

This dubious concept might have worked if someone had written something funny for either comic actor to say. Instead, five writers are credited with this mess of pratfalls and bleeding heart monologues.

Caruso, who showed flair in the Val Kilmer vehicle "The Salton Sea," has a penchant for the dark side. In this case, it's the plodding, predictable ZIP code of the dark side.

Certainly, the elements for a better movie are here. The credits are dotted with multi-Oscar nominees. But not all are well used. What Frantic needs most is an infusion of chemistry. Somehow Polanski has failed to make these actors connect.

Offers two or three worthwhile laughs.

Pacific Heights wastes our time and the talent of three top actors, Michael Keaton, Melanie Griffith and Matthew Modine. What possibly attracted them to this inconsequential exploitation film about a tenant from hell terrorizing his landlords in an effort to steal their home? We keep waiting for the film to develop some larger meaning or greater purpose. It never does. [29 Sept 1990, p.C2]

The script plays like ''The Dirty Dozen'' saving the passenger list of ''Airport `77.''

Dr. Giggles strains for the kind of charnel house humor that once was the glory of 1950s horror comics like Tales from the Crypt. But Coto's imagination, like Dr. Giggle's rusty scalpels, isn't all that sharp, and the picture soon peters out into a flat, predictable series of stomach-churning unpleasantries. [26 Oct 1992, p.5C]

But in the end everything comes down to Lawrence, who has yet to develop a truly distinct comedic sensibility.

In a case study of how to screw up a simple, powerful revenge story, director Jonathan Hensleigh punishes audiences with an unbearably sluggish action movie that requires the word "action" to be placed in quotes.

Custom-designed for 13 year-olds, laden with broad sight gags, gross sound effects and a bowlful of potty jokes.

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.