There's nothing classic about Surviving Eden, even if it is better than reality TV.

It's an event film, all about flash and spectacle, even though the movie itself is void of any real substance.

The surreal and silly sequel to the hit 2015 comedy skates on the well-known but still-appealing comic personas of stars Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg and their zany chemistry.

Teenage summer film trash such as The Heavenly Kid makes one root for the leaves to start turning brown.

All the obligatory plot elements are there. Love and loss, anger and forgiveness, illness and death. But they never flow together to make a coherent story. Instead, they just pop up whenever the script is in trouble. Which is all the time.

Led by a trio of dumb, dumber and dumbest, Without a Paddle is a testosterone comedy that might just as well be titled "Without a Brain Cell."

So dark and dirge-like are its first 85 minutes that a few uplifting minutes at the end can't dissipate the somber cloud Noel summons.

As Premonition zigzags toward its solution it loses its head completely, packing a risible final reel with left-field religious disquisitions and heartfelt warnings against infidelity.

I can only hope that this film was a lot of fun to make. That way, someone will have enjoyed the experience.

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.

There's almost no reason to see the movie, unless you have no qualms about wasting your time.

Johnson Family Vacation is simply a bad trip.

For years now Wilder has been trying to imitate the success of his mentor, director Mel Brooks. But he has repeatedly failed. That's why the biggest mystery in "Haunted Honeymoon" is why anyone would still give Wilder money to make a picture.

While it's fun to watch Garner return to her action roots, the brute force haymaker that is Peppermint is a far cry from the sophisticated thrills of "Alias."

New in Town is "The Pajama Game" without the songs, the laughs or the bare-knuckled realism.

There's something light and insubstantial about this movie. It almost floats away as you watch it.

It's outrageously stereotypical and weirdly personal, so loonily exaggerated it keeps surprising you.

Tries to blend old film noir and new high-tech thriller styles with only sporadic impact.

Plagued by continuity problems, ham-fisted storytelling and a problematic voiceover by Da Brat, Civil Brand feels less like a prison movie than a prison sentence.

There is a good movie here--Strait actually sings the songs that stand on their own, and he's appealing, despite the rock movie cliches.

The fight scenes are staged cleanly enough by Newt Arnold, a veteran assistant director (to Sam Peckinpah, among others) making his debut at the helm. But the contest format is hopelessly repetitive and inert, the characters would seem underdeveloped in a comic book, and the restricted setting ensures that the action will never develop any real scale or velocity. The Chinese may take it on the chin in Bloodsport, but their own movies are infinitely better.

There's no reason to look at this movie unless you're interested in computer graphics. But, if you are, why not wait for the video game? It may not be any better,but at least you can turn it off. [17 Jan 1996, p.7]

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.

Starts with such promising quirkiness that it's easy to forget for the moment that you are watching a teen comedy.

It's a murky, empty-headed dive into the depths of the Antarctic and the heart of monster movie cliches that leaves you praying for most of the cast to get killed off fast, to put them (and us) out of our misery.

Like Ice Cube's "Friday," How High probably will survive as an underground classic, until it's pushed further underground and forgotten by the next disposable "cult classic" to hit video.

A bizarre, bloody adventure movie.

A movie of good intentions and awful results.