This is a movie that boggles the mind: a bad-taste comedy that makes the average effort by the Farrelly Brothers (mysteriously thanked in the credits) look like a Merchant-Ivory film.

Band of the Hand does not lack humorous moments. Unfortunately, most of these occur in the first half of the movie as the young criminals play out their primitive conflicts. But this able group of young actors has been given the difficult and insurmountable task of breathing life into a film that cannot decide if it is an after-school television special or a ''Miami Vice'' episode.

Revenge is a dish best served cold, as some Albanian dramatist once said, but Taken 2 isn't good-cold, as in steely and purposeful; it's cold as in "lost the scent."

A staggeringly bad picture: a shallow, cliche-ridden mess that keeps blowing up on screen.

Like Father Like Son has the cheap, florid look of a rejected television pilot, and the same air of anything-for-a-laugh desperation. [02 Oct 1987, p.J]

Buried somewhere in the screenplay are some Robert Altman-esque satirical intentions, in which the wildly corrupt college football recruitment process is offered as a panoramic image of frenzied American venality. But Bud Smith's broad, colorless direction removes whatever sting the material may once have had, edging the action instead toward sub-"Police Academy" slapstick-flying pizzas, exploding fire extinguishers, mass fist- fights that break out for no discernible reason. [25 March 1988, p.D]

It's the sort of film that can only be watched in stunned disbelief, as it lumbers from one misfired, unpleasant sequence to the next. The nicest thing that can be said about Nothing but Trouble is that there is nothing else like it, thank goodness. [19 Feb 1991, p.7C]

Dark Streets lost me early, real early, like still-adjusting-my-eyes-in-a-dark-theater early.

Released in theaters five years after its 1999 Sundance Film Festival premiere, Kalem's film is too precious, too self-conscious and far too enamored with itself to ever have any kind of genuine emotional truth.

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.

The movie slogs along in between combat scenes. Only a precious few of the bantering jokes among the green quartet hold any amusement for those over the age of 10.

The Emoji Movie could not be more meh.

Director Arthur Penn (Bonnnie and Clyde) may have intended this to be a campy homage to Hitchcock, but instead he gives us a boring, frustrating and stupid story. [06 Feb 1987, p.A]

RoboCop 2 is every bit as sadistic as its 1987 predecessor but considerably less effective.

Black Moon Rising utilizes every cheap thriller trick in the book. If a lackluster script is going to rely on gadgetry and chase scenes to satisfy its audience, it had better pulse with more suspense and originality than a TV rerun. This one doesn't. [10 Jan 1986, p.34]

A mess of a movie, a no chills nightmare about what happens to a group of rubes at a Carolina truck stop when the machines go nuts. [29 July 1986, p.3]

The movie itself has no edge. It barely has a movie.

The coarse material, from a screenplay by Seth Winston and Michael J. Nathanson, is roughed up even more by Dragoti's abrasive exaggeration, both of performance (there's a terrifying sequence in which Hicks finally gets her long dreamed-of engagement ring and goes into a frenzy of triumph and delight) and of visual style (visits to the office of sinister shrink Wallace Shawn are filmed in weird expressionist off-angles). [14 Apr 1989, p.D]

A rock 'n' roll film should be funny-crazy -- not just a big, dumb promo for some over-the-hill dudes in makeup who are trying to sell today's kids on yesterday's glory by championing deliquency.

Just Married is what industry people refer to as "January Junk," cinematic flotsam that gets tossed ashore once they have cleared the shelves of Oscar contenders.

The film may as well be titled "Stephenie Meyer's Waiting Around."

A stupid, stylized road picture. [10 Sept 1993]

Has a terrific premise but no script.

In A Thousand Words the camera stays about two inches from Murphy's hyperactive face, and you start to see the strain and desperation in the actor's eyes.

One of the most mawkish films ever made.

The political movie satire from hell.

There hasn`t been a movie quite like Police Academy 4 since, well . . . "Police Academy 3." Make that exactly like, because here are the same characters, the same situations and the same jokes (most of them focused on damage suffered in the genital region) that have served the series since its inauspicious debut in 1984.

Plenty of comedies aren't funny, but this one is more than that. It's wholeheartedly narcissistic in its portrait of male petulance and self-pity.

A disjointed and ugly film that has all the dramatic depth of a tractor pull. [06 June 1997, p.J]

Most disappointing are the seven 'Kids' themselves, played by midgets wearing elaborate headpieces. Their behavior is every bit as gross as their reputations: Valerie Vomit uses her digestive instability to win a fistfight; Windy Winston's chief weapon is flatulance; Nat Nerd graphically wets his pants. [24 Aug 1987, p.5]

Johnson Family Vacation is simply a bad trip.

In its execution, Stand Alone is no worse than other violent vigilante films in the ''Death Wish'' mold--its vision simply is more offensive.

From time to time, a movie comes along that is so unconventional, so weird, so flagrantly negligent of mainstream taste that it will develop a loyal cult following--"The Rocky Horror Picture Show," now celebrating its 10th profit-filled anniversary, being a good example. This is the kind of movie the makers of "Morons From Outer Space" set out to produce, but failed to deliver. But who knows? In Britain, they may eat this stuff up. [12 Nov 1985, p.C5]

Most of the problem with this movie is that Ernest is too much of a cartoon to carry such exposure, particularly since he hogs most of the scenes. The other characters, even the children, behave like cardboard props.

There are few words to describe the awfulness of this movie, but let's give it the old college try: dismal, depressing, embarrassing and utterly lacking in any artistic or social worth.

Responsible for this trash is director Fritz Kiersch, and remember that name. Last year Kiersch gave us one of 1984`s worst films, his adaptation of Stephen King`s ''Children of the Corn.'' Now, with Tuff Turf, Kiersch has made the ''worst'' list two years in a row.

It's hard not to feel angry that you've spent almost two hours watching this moronic exercise.

The Brady Bunch Movie, which was directed and written by at least five people whom we prefer not to embarrass, looks bad, sounds bad and doesn't make any sense. There's even something nightmarish about it. All these bad jokes and vacant sets become almost horrifying, as if the film were on the verge of proving that life itself is a bad joke on a vacant set. [17 Feb 1995, p.J]

Wretchedly unfunny. [14 Aug 1992, p.18]

There's no plot here; like the MTV show that spawned it, this movie is just a progression of increasingly disgusting and/or dangerous stunts.

A lamebrained attempt at horror that is just a derivative pastiche of ideas lifted from other bad films.

Verdict: not so hot

Phantoms may have sold like hotcakes as a book. But this movie version is a grotesque fiasco, a confoundingly senseless story told with unexciting visuals, cliched dialogue and ear-bashing sounds... Watching it is a truly hellish experience. [23 Jan 1998]

Shot in the same style as “Spinal Tap,” Electric Apricot fails to wow in every way possible, but the music disappoints the most.

Commenting on performances here is like critiquing the production design of a porno--it's beside the point. Briefly: Knoxville, bad choice, man. Reynolds, you make a good villain. Simpson, lovely posing. Scott, you're from Minnesota and it shows--but I bet stunt driving school was fun.

A bloody mess...The effects are nothing you haven't seen before; the acting is so broad, it borders on the ridiculous; and the story, once intriguing, has become ludicrous. [11 March 1996, p.C3]

The melodramatic clumsiness of the script, and, in one scene, its gratuitous endorsement of marijuana, betrays the youth of its writer, recent UCLA graduate Shane Black. And veteran director Richard Donner, whose credits include another cartoon movie, can't seem to thread the scenes together in any meaningful way. [6 Mar 1987, p.G]

The costumes, on-location scenery and stunts were fantastic. Unfortunately, the acting made the witty script downright dull. When it comes to these Three Musketeers, I have to say the better version is behind the candy counter.

Not only is Slackers painfully bad, but it's also about as morally unpleasant as a teen sex comedy can be.

There are good movies, bad movies and confoundingly bad movies. My Favorite Martian belongs to that rare third category. [12 Feb 1999, p.A]

Plays like an amateur debut effort written over a weekend during which its writer wasn't entirely sober.

Mark my words: Mindhunters will do for psycho-thrillers what "Showgirls" did for stripper movies.

It relies heavily upon the cliches of the genre: sorties into garishly lit woods, crackling twigs, indiscriminate lightning bolts, sudden power outages and flickering flashlights. Only a mote of humor graces the film, and that is Jason's cunning ability to come up with ever more dreadful weapons for each successive crime, graduating from stake to machete to circular saw. Dare we hope, in Part VIII, for a neutron bomb to obliterate the series altogether? [16 May 1988, p.C7]

It stinks from top to bottom. Even Tom Cruise ("Risky Business"), one of the most appealing actors of his generation, can now claim to have made his first truly awful film. And the same goes for director Ridley Scott ("Alien"), who specializes in artful, heartless movies. Legend, however, isn't the least bit artful. [18 Apr 1986, p.N]

So excruciatingly awful, the word "dumb" could sue for slander.

The fatal flaw in David Duchovny's big-screen directorial debut, House of D, is not Robin Williams as a retarded janitor. It's David Duchovny, the man who chose to cast Robin Williams as a retarded janitor.

More eloquently than any funeral director could, Weekend at Bernie's II makes the case for quick cremation. [13 July 1993, p.C5]

A misjudgment from metallic head to titanium toe.

Snyder must have known in preproduction that his greasy collection of near-rape fantasies and violent revenge scenarios disguised as a female-empowerment fairy tale wasn't going to satisfy anyone but himself.

This movie thrusts you so close to these intoxicated idiots that you practically have to wipe off secondhand tequila, sweat and spit stains afterward.

A loathsome shocker... Watching it almost turned my stomach.

If any of this was surprising or cleverly timed, you'd laugh and then cringe. In Vacation you cringe first and ask questions later.

It's not just the sound of crickets you hear watching this movie. It's the sound of dead crickets.

This is the worst, least, dumbest picture made by people of talent this year.

The film has none of the charm of the series.

That`s right, Fever Pitch receives ''zero stars,'' a rating given infrequently and most often to a film that is morally offensive. There`s no other way to describe Fever Pitch, which, aside from its multitude of filmmaking sins, has the gall to do a complete turnabout with its ending, twisting a supposedly antigambling, message movie into nothing less than a promotional film for casino betting, feeding off the chronic gambler`s pathetic hope to ''get even'' through one more toss of the dice.

Evil isn't this boring.

A disgusting, artless shocker...A cruel film that offers teen-age girls in peril, as well as a gruesome beheading. Only for sickies. [11 July 1980, p.8]

Bad decision after bad decision occurs over 93 minutes.

Even with 87.5 years to go, the 21st century may never see a stupider comedy than That's My Boy.

Viewing UHF may be injurious to your sense of humor. Rarely has a comedy tried so hard and failed so often to be funny. [21 Jul 1989, p.A]

Cage is going for manly, if conflicted, family-guy confidence in this role, but somehow it comes off as nuttier than the events surrounding him.

A Good Old-Fashioned Orgy isn't just not funny, it's totally just not funny.

At its worst, a distasteful series of homophobic, racist and sexist jokes, and otherwise little more than jollies of the most juvenile and locker room sort. [24 Mar 1986, p.5C]

There are comedies that make you double over in laughter, and there are comedies that are eerily unfunny to the point where you start thinking about a class-action suit.

A monstrously crude, blatantly tasteless film reminiscent of the now bygone drive-in movies. It's also sterling evidence of why they haven't been missed.

A nauseating thriller that reaches down from the screen and defies you to stay in the theater to see what desecration of the human body it will present next. [24 Feb 1986, p.C3]

You live in a free country, you put up with crud like Hostel Part II. It truly is crud, though.

This is easily one of the worst films I`ve ever seen.

The point of all this nihilism and grotesqueness? You got me. Perhaps Korine thinks he's getting at some harsh truth in showing troubled youngsters running amok without positive adult role models, but that's malarkey. There's a difference between unblinkingly observing reality and wallowing in degeneracy. [6 March 1998]

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."

About as interesting as watching paint dry.

Nothing, absolutely nothing, at either location is the slightest bit funny. [13 Sep 1985, p.C]

It was Mark Twain who famously said, "Golf is a good walk spoiled." I'm telling you that Bobby Jones: Stroke of Genius is 120 minutes wasted.

A laughably bad, offensive movie with holes in its story that you could drive a truck though.

A study in formula film making and a lousy movie. [03 Sep 1985, p.5C]

Stewart's insistently ironic delivery of every line becomes an irritant in a movie that is already monstrously irritating.

The most horrifying film of 2007, Bratz is based on the popular line of collagen-lipped, doe-eyed slut-ette dolls and their male companions, "the boys with a passion for fashion ... and the Bratz!" (In other words, they're bi-curious.)

The Happytime Murders is a one-joke movie, minus one joke. The year may cough up a worse film, but probably not a more joyless, witless one, raunchy or otherwise.

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

A most unfunny comedy about hijinks on the slopes, featuring a short ski patrol leader, a flatulent dog, assorted cutups and a stereotypical black patrol member who sings and dances a lot more than he skis. [19 Jan 1990, p.A]

Is it the worst film of 2019, or simply the most recent misfire of 2019? Reader, I swear on a stack of pancakes: “Cats” cannot be beat for sheer folly and misjudgment and audience-reaction-to-“Springtime for Hitler”-in-“The Producers” stupefaction.

A hideously violent shocker about a woman who is repeatedly raped and castrates her victims. [18 July 1980, p.8]

Father Figures is a movie, ostensibly. I'm pretty sure it is. Moving images were projected, along with recorded sound, which indicates it is a movie, but the effect was so listless, low-energy and profoundly unentertaining that I jotted down in my notes "what even IS this?" It would be more accurate to describe the experience as a nearly two-hour borderline hostage situation, with torture involving bad, offensive and unfunny "comedy."

I didn't laugh once during the entire film-not at the slapstick, not at the humor, all of which is pitched at the preschool level. [25 March 1988, p.A]

The result just might be the most hypocritical feature in the history of film as well as the history of hypocrisy, and along with serving beer, I hope they show I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell in hell.

Nothing in this movie is properly focused; everyone keeps talking about a character whom we never meet and does not matter; the tone keeps slipping around from indolent satire to thudding sincerity, and the Challenger shuttle disaster backdrop is queasy-making at best, offensive at worst.