Striving for low-key character comedy, Diminished Capacity ends up diminishing its returns.

The teaming of Robinson and Rudd periodically gets Friendship in gear. But the film’s primary comic impulse equates to the sound of gears grinding, in an attempt to shift from second to third.

They graduated but didn't really grow up. Most of the less than lovable troupe from the first movie are back, including Steve Guttenberg, and so is the low level of comedy. This time, at least, director Jerry Paris from the old Dick Van Dyke show is on hand to improve the timing and pace. [05 Apr 1985, p.C]

Cocaine Cowboys would be a great one-hour television piece. Unfortunately, it's a two-hour long documentary that recalls, in scrupulous, unnecessary detail, the rise and fall of Miami's role as the cocaine capital of America.

If the film's diffidence is its greatest charm, it is also, in the end, its greatest limitation-it's a movie that seems afraid to declare itself, to make the big move that might propel it from the pleasant to the memorable. [03 Aug 1990]

Shifting her "Silence of the Lambs" accent a bit westward, the always-reliable Foster is given little to do except react and smile enigmatically, while the always-wooden Gere is all grins and charm, coming across less as a shadowy protagonist than a State Farm agent. [05 Feb 1993, p.B]

Instead of cashing in on barely healed wounds, Ladder 49 could have taken a different cue from pornography and gone the way of "Boogie Nights," a fascinating, difficult and honest glimpse into another storied profession.

The "comedy" part of Sex is Comedy comes intentionally from cast-crew interaction.

Writer-director Silver, who trained in documentaries, appears flummoxed by the challenges of getting the audience inside the heads of these young men.

The new film does little but repeat the gags and situations of the first movie, with a slight change of venue. [20 Nov 1992, p.A]

Kaufman wants to be bold in his depiction of lovemaking, but he keeps copping out, cutting away from the deed to such time-worn metaphors as booming bongo drums, pots that boil over on stove tops and African dancers gyrating wildly. Were Kaufman's frankness ever to equal the "passion and honesty" he praises in Miller's work, the film would merit at least an NC-21, if not 41. [05 Oct 1990, p.I]

The script for Spiderhead makes a rookie mistake: It lets the audience get too far out ahead of the Teller character’s moral and narrative awakening. Hemsworth has some icy, rascally fun with his scenes; when Teller and Smollett get some time together, on their own, the story flickers to something like life. But even at 100 minutes minus end credits, the film’s stretch marks are undeniable.

Though Stealth's strengths are obvious -- high-tech marvels and a good cast -- so are its flaws. At its worst moments, a mad robot seems to have taken over the movie, too.

The film's triple thesis is that elections are run badly, Democrats are often clueless and Republicans are clever. Maybe--but that still leaves too many unanswered questions.

Cast against type as a sleazy psychopath in John Schlesinger's Pacific Heights, Michael Keaton seems to be having a very good time - a much better time, probably, than the ticket-buying public will have. [28 Sept 1990, p.C]

But once the action wanders off the playing field, "The Program" shows all the cleverness, originality and depth of the Chicago Bears' offense.

Uruguayan-born Fede Alvarez (“Don’t Breathe,” the recent “Evil Dead” reboot) handles the action breathlessly and well enough. The movie’s acted with serious conviction. But I kind of hate it.

Turns out to be nothing special. Well, the music is. The storytelling is not.

The very elements of Eat Pray Love that helped make it a success in 40 languages -- the breezy prose, the relentless sorting-through of dissatisfactions, a steady stream of intriguing sights -- turn the film into a travelogue with a little spiritual questing on the side.

Legendary is so intent on paying heartfelt tribute to dogged young athletes that it neglects basic story needs.

By the two-hour mark the fun had oozed out of the movie for me. It's long. Or feels it.

Though the episodes are monumentally predictable, there's something in the dedication of the cast that maintains a minimal interest. [11 Mar 1988, p.L]

Too often Tolkien lumbers up to its big moments, such as the preposterous climax involving the title character scrambling around the western front, calling out his schoolmate’s name. Fact or fiction isn’t the issue. Either way it plays like hokum.

To work, it has to make us feel crazy with love, like "Vertigo" did. Instead, it often just makes us feel crazy for believing any of it.

The only people humiliated, really, are older people and heavy people and nerds and vegans and black people and mothers who breast-feed their 4-year-olds. Everybody else gets a pass.

It's one of those fast, slick, half-smart shows that can't decide whether to pay its debts to action or reality -- and winds up cheating both.

Weathers turns out to be a disappointingly weak lead whose low-key likability doesn't make up for his lack of anger and drive-crucial attributes for any action hero. And Baxley is surprisingly stingy with his action sequences.

Very little sense of the performers' humanity emerges from behind their stage roles, perhaps because Bogdanovich has directed the supposedly spontaneous dialogue to sound just as forced and theatrical as the scripted lines. [20 March 1992, p.2]