Class Action occupies itself with long passages of family melodrama, most of it as familiar as the courtroom drama but far less entertaining. [15 Mar 1991]

Some stunts and jokes are genuinely clever.

By the second hour of The Battle of the Five Armies, the visual approach becomes a paradox: monotonously dynamic epic storytelling.

The film's didactic passages cancel out its dramatic integrity, and the results are strangely neutral and unmoving.

Tries for both civilized wit and primitive joy -- and mostly misses both.

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

One can hardly argue with the desire to make a wholesome movie for families that extols honesty and decency, but it all comes too easily, too superficially.

What began as a sketch movie ended up like a slightly better than average "SNL" flick, though Odenkirk, Cross and a number of famous and semi-famous friends do get some chuckles out of their story of Ronnie Dobbs, compulsive troublemaker. [16 Sep 2003, p.C3]

Although his is not a perfect film, Tollin employs his soap-opera dialogue and aim-for-the-solar-plexus message quite unapologetically.

The Goldfinch is both too long and too short; dull to watch but scanty on the details about logistics, character, and just how anything of note actually occurs. The mystery of the film is something to be endured, rather than solved. But the real mystery is our leading man. We never know who Theo is as an adult, or if we’re on his side, or why we should care.

A tasteful, intelligent, well-acted film about one of the most ghoulish serial killers in American crime history - and I'm afraid that's a good part of what's wrong with it.

Feels like a demonstration reel for toys, action figures and future DisneyQuest installations.

Isn't novel entertainment, but adults who accompany kids to it are not likely to feel that it is a form of abuse for either of them.

The Cutting Edge is certainly inoffensive enough, with the exception of a scene in which Doug teaches Kate to loosen up by taking her out to drink shots-a cliche that doesn`t need perpetuating. But if the studio didn`t have enough faith in the movie to release it until well after the Winter Games, the reason probably has something to do with the movie`s lack of faith that an audience can accept anything beyond a 0.5 degree of difficulty.

I didn't half-mind Fired Up, but half a mind is more than it deserves.

Too ambiguous, too meandering to envelop us. It's ambitious work but ultimately cold, distant and difficult to piece together.

Plot doesn't matter much here, as Scary Movie 3 exists solely to reference and lampoon other movies, in this case "The Ring," "Signs " and "8 Mile."

It's meant to be open, heartwarming and real, but beneath its often attractively performed surface, the clichés are grinding as heavily as in any ''Rambo'' picture [21 Oct 1988]

So fast, sleek and riveting it almost makes you expect miracles -- which never materialize.

The result is a film that feels hidebound. And nobody ever called a dance-driven movie "hidebound."

Like the film itself, Jim Doyle is smart enough to be engaging and lovely to look at, but he's too one-dimensional to be satisfying.

The acting is quite deft, if extremely broad, but screenwriter Kundo Koyama seesaws uncertainly between jokes and grief.

The show has its moments-some funny scenes, some wild stop-motion Phil Tippett computer action, some of Torn's scenery-chewing. But they're only moments. RoboCop 3's main problem is that nobody fouled up its program. It's a RoboMovie. [05 Nov 1993, p.C]

With tonal inconsistencies and poorly written characters, any awe inspired by Alita: Battle Angel is replaced with a profound sense of confusion.

As its awkward subtitle suggests, the execution is more than a little sloppy.

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.

De Broca never develops the transforming love onscreen and ends up with an awkward and indigestible movie.

Sadly, this noble effort is loving but lame.