Used Cars is full of used characters, used ideas, and used jokes, many of which are in astonishingly bad taste.

Punchy, cleverly stylized, but utterly empty yarn about a feisty young woman who welds by day, disco-dances by night, and dreams of the day when she can devote her life to her art.

John Hughes pours his usual slickness and sentimentality all over everything. [27 Feb 1987]

Edwards's mess isn't so fine. In trying to revive the great tradition of rough-and-tumble farce, he strains so hard for vigorous slapstick and wild gags that he forgets to be funny...In the end, there's something basically askew when a movie gives its heroes a valuable piano to move -- a classic Laurel and Hardy situation -- and then makes it an easy job, without a single teetering bridge to carry it across! Stan and Ollie, where are you when we need you?

You thought brawny Bruce Willis couldn't play a brainy psychologist? You were right. Or maybe it's the idiocy of the movie surrounding him that sinks his performance long before the halfway mark.

The stagebound setting gets boring; the action doesn't build a steady momentum; and the characters do far too much hanging around until the camera's ready to point at them again.

A second-rate adaptation of the second-rate Choderlos de Laclos novel: two hours of pretty people sitting in pretty rooms and talking about sex. [23 Dec 1988, A& L, p.19]

Scott Wilson gives a surprisingly lively performance as the apparent villain of the story, while good guys Judd Nelson and Ally Sheedy strive to out-bland each other. The action is generally vicious, vulgar, and vapid. [9 May 1986, p.25]

The Abyss' isn't abysmal, but it's a replay of hits we've already seen - a recycled "close encounters of the wet kind'' with far too few ideas of its own. [18 Aug 1989, Arts, p.10]

As before, the movie is more impressive for its finely detailed vision of Los Angeles as a futuristic slum than for its story, acting, or message. It's all downhill after the first few eye-dazzling minutes. [2 Oct 1992]

The director, Taylor Hackford, doesn't have the cinematic savvy to sustain so many tensions in a meaningful way; and the screenplay strays far over the line between incisive political comment and heavy-handed Red-baiting.

The story is mostly a rehash of the original "48 Hrs.," with the same hard-boiled mixture of violence and wisecracks. Directed by Walter Hill, who specializes in this kind of thing and gives it a certain conviction, if little else. [13 Jul 1990, p.10]

Failed comedy-drama with two intermingled plots, one about a high school boy seeking his own way in life, the other about an older woman with career and romance problems. Directed flatly and lifelessly by Randal Kleiser. [16 Aug 1984, p.31]

While the production is attractive in a calendar-photo sort of way, there's not a speck of genuine feeling in its glossy images.

The Witches of Eastwick, based on John Updike's novel, takes just about every wrong turn it can find. Perhaps this was predictable, with a wild-driving director like George Miller at the wheel. What's surprising is how many opportunities for vulgarity and stupidity the film invents for itself, even beyond the book's built-in temptations to excess. [12 June 1987, p.21]

I guarantee you, if Charles Dickens were alive today, he might well be writing movies but he sure as shootin' wouldn't have written "Ghosts."

Few things are more dispiriting than a holiday movie straining to become a perennial. Such is the case with Fred Claus, an insipid Christmas comedy.

The people who made Year One seem to think that all you have to do to make a hit comedy is get a bunch of jokesters together. But where are the jokes?

Just because The Fountain is different doesn't mean it's good. In fact, it's borderline unwatchable, though this hasn't prevented the Oscar buzz from buzzing.

There are a few hilarious bits, but even those are drowned out by constant gunfire and Morgan’s motormouthing. Willis is going through the motions; Scott is funny, if irritating; Morgan is irritating and not so funny.

The movie starts with insights about the need for more humane values in health care, then buries them under an avalanche of frivolities, vulgarities, and clichés.

Notable only for being a catalog of just about every kid-pic cliché ever committed to film.

If, as the ads would lead you to believe, you go to see The Break-Up expecting a romantic comedy, you will be severely disappointed. If you go to it expecting a good movie, you will also be severely disappointed.

The main performances are generally weak, although the smaller ones are sometimes brilliant, and the yarn never builds much momentum as it leapfrogs from one subplot to another. [28 Dec 1990, Arts, p.14]

The coarseness wouldn't be so bad if at least the steady stream of obscenities were funny.

It's all so resolutely uninspired that even the kids in the audience may want to duck out.

Blending animation and live action, this ferocious fantasy is hopelessly vulgar in ways never dreamed of by "Who Framed Roger Rabbit."

The Bucket List is a movie for oldsters that, paradoxically, looks as if it was made for 15-year-olds. If this is what is meant in Hollywood as "thinking outside the box," then it's time to get a new box.