Good cast, nearly hopeless script.

It is well made as far as it goes. I wish it went beyond its own carefully prescribed limits of the commercially acceptable.

Midway through I started wondering why I wasn't laughing more. "Baby Mama" was not written by Fey and/or Poehler, which may be the reason.

Stillwater feels like a movie filmed in a slightly blurry state of mind, then reshaped in the editing stage into a whole new blur. You don’t know where it’s going, and that’s a plus. Yet director and co-writer Tom McCarthy’s drama is as uncertain as his good movies, “Spotlight” highest among them, are quietly confident in going about their business.

Part of the problem here is one of proportion: The movie throws a misjudged majority of the material to the villains and lets the unfashionably sincere and sweet-natured Muppets fend for themselves.

For awhile, the stately symphonic score, urbane setting and understated dress make Birth feel powerful--until it feels empty, lacking what Glazer so furiously exhibited in his equally stylized freshman endeavor: heart.

Berenger and Rogers look right and move right, but there is no spark behind the emotions they dutifully mime. Shading is something the director reserves for inanimate objects: He makes things come alive and turns people flat.

Bruce Willis' film debut should prove to be a disappointment for Moonlighting fans, because the script he has been given here does not compare to the elaborate material he has worked with on some episodes of the TV show. Willis plays a business man who winds up falling in love with a woman (Kim Basinger) who goes crazy every time she has a drink. Director Blake Edwards (10) does not distinguish himself with this exercise in nonstop slapstick, and the performances of both Willis and Basinger are lost amid the rubble. [08 May 1987, p.C7]

Suffers from an overwhelming sense of teen movie facility and "Murder She Wrote" neatness.

At its best, Transamerica made me laugh and feel for Bree. At its worst, it made me cringe at the potential creepiness of its central relationship.

"Masked" is erratic and volatile, too, from scene to scene, moment to moment. The script is chaotic, but the top-flight actors play their hearts out.

No question, there are funny moments. There should have been more. [21 May 1983]

Even before the witness-protection/trial angle has been conveniently jettisoned, it's clear that the plot is no more than a compulsory ingredient in a previously tested formula. Workmanlike in its execution, reliably predictable throughout, the movie might as well have been called "Another Paycheck."

The solid cast and honest Austen scholarship make Becoming Jane fitfully entertaining. But it's hard for the film to escape the shadow of Austen's superior talent when it filches so much from her books.

A movie that must spend most of its running time explaining its hopelessly complicated premises, which leaves very little room for anything much to happen. [22 Nov 1989, p.C1]

You couldn't accuse the film of practicing what it preaches: careful stewardship of a precious resource.

In the sadistic yet middling road-rage thriller Unhinged, Crowe literally steers the vehicle delivering the big box of acting, over- and under-. While there’s barely a movie there, a year from now, when the multiplexes of the world will either largely be back, be gone or be something in between, we’ll have forgotten Unhinged.

Adapted by Australian filmmaker Phillip Noyce ("Dead Calm") from Tom Clancy's best seller, "Patriot Games" is an uncomfortably angry, completely bald-faced fantasy about violence as an answer to middle-class, middle-age ennui. Sadder still, it isn't a very effective one. [5 June 1992, p.C2]

All the young actors, especially Joshua Hartnett as the misunderstood drug dealer, deliver fine performances in their diverse group, which forms a kind of horror film equivalent of "The Breakfast Club." [25 Dec 1998]

It's a tick better than the movie version of "Jumanji," if that's any help. If you liked the book, you'll find the film of "Zathura" faithful in most respects, though not so much amplified as padded.

Why does this film, with so many first-rate artists in its corner, not quite work? Partly it's a matter of style, but mostly it's because the script is made of tin.

If only the film had been a more visually satisfying experience.

Sayles must have meant his movie to stir and provoke, but the self-contained look of it yields something else-a sense of quaintness, of harmless nostalgia.

Visually, it's busy, hefty and propulsive, but emotionally and thematically, it's as light as air. These engines could have used a bit more in the tank.

The action beats come straight out of the video game "Call of Duty." And when you have real SEALs placed in a picture that lives and dies on the same old first-person-shooter aesthetic, you have a film divided against itself.

Just an OK thriller, full of standard scenarios and cookie-cutter characters.

A few moments of sly inspiration are not enough to carry an entire feature; along with the tears, it leaves behind an aftertaste of phoniness. [16 March 1990, Friday, p.H]

Lacks the energy and urgency of its source material.