Everyone tries very hard to make the story sweet and funny, but the soggy screenplay defeats them every time.

Surely it couldn't be meant as dramatic realism! But it is. And amazingly, the movie gets worse as it goes along.

I hope Keaton doesn't begin to make a specialty of these roles. They play into what is least attractive in her repertoire – the loosey-goosey, knockabout side of her that all too swiftly devolves into hysterics.

The acting is solid and the heroine's quirky dialogue is amusing for a while. But repetitious writing and a weakly constructed story turn the promising premise into a disappointing mishmash of crime, politics, and show business.

The movie isn't boring, exactly. It's too nutty for that.

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.

Borderline unwatchable, although, as is true of all Gilliam movies, it certainly is different.

A suggestion to screenwriters: Stop telling stalkers that their passion isn't misplaced and that the girl will come around in the end. It is, and she won't. Just give it up.

There's enough family dysfunction here to fill out a dozen soppy soap operas.

A sham.

What a silly movie this is. [11 Apr 1980, p.19]

Isn't overwhelmingly good, but it's just nutty enough to keep you watching.

Sam Firstenberg directed the mindless mayhem. [15 Nov 1984, p.47]

Most of the laughs come near the beginning, before Rick Friedberg's klutzy directing becomes annoyingly monotonous.

The movie has a well-meaning message about love and loyalty being the bedrock of real family values, but its good intentions sag as the story trades its air of mischievous comedy for trite sentimentality, arbitrary plot twists, and enough maudlin melodramatics to sustain a tabloid TV series.

Even the delightful Duff disappoints.

Costner is convincing as the hero, ably supported by Joe Morton as a short-tempered supervisor and Kathy Bates as a feisty neighbor. Dragonfly has little chance of "Ghost"-like popularity, though.

In its depiction of the Las Vegas nightclub scene and in its own cinematic strategies, the film is quite instructive about the intersection of sex, money, and entertainment in some areas of popular American culture. [29 Sept 1995]

The plot is predictable, the characters are cliches, and all the actors look and sound like refugees from a movie Martin Scorsese would have made vastly better three decades ago.

As the hero, Christopher Reeve oozes with sincerity in the world-peace scenes - he helped write the story of the film, and this may be why he overdoes it. But he's also funny when he gets back to being klutzy Clark Kent, so the movie doesn't completely drown in its own good intentions.

Strenuously unfunny sequel.

The story is nonsensical, the filmmaking is monotonous, and the acting - aside from Marlon Brando's brilliant cameo as the cultist - is weak. [14 May 1997, p.14]

One thing is certain: It's a bomb trying to be a hit, and at that it'll never succeed.

By comparison, Bride Wars makes "Sex and the City" seem like Jane Austen.

Unoriginal.

Crass, juvenile, ribald. [19 Jun 1998, p.B2]

Three brief comedies filmed in English for a German television series. The most thoughtful is Seidelman's contribution, The Dutch Master."

The movie's most original features are the awfulness of the dialogue and the hamminess of Richard Jordan's performance as a Nazilike policeman. He seems to have given up on the project long before director Alan Johnson ran out of film. [28 Nov 1986, p.39]

The plot is hamstrung by trite formulas, and there's too much violence and family tension for very young viewers. Shaquille O'Neal is likable as the title character, though.

It's all idiotic but energetic, directed by Jan De Bont in his usual techno-action style.

This is fatuous twaddle with a nasty, misogynistic edge.

How could such a high-octane cast produce such low-octane horror?

What links all these characters is Myers's gift for antic, elfin burlesque. He's like a second-best Peter Sellers.

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]

Adam Sandler plays a dual role in Jack and Jill, and he's a lot better as Jill than as Jack.

It's the audience for this film that will require therapy.

Violent and vapid, but the visual jolts may please horror buffs.

At points, the film sinks below the level of competent.

Rarely has a film poured so much energy into generating fiery emotions, yet remained so icy cold in its effect...Revolution has been dazzlingly shot by cinematographer Bernard Lutic in a process called System 35, but so much visual grandeur seems more embarrassing than engaging when the dramatic element is such a mess.

The cast, at least on paper, is formidable, if ill-used.

Its main message is that everyone should believe and behave in exactly the same way. Groupthink wins again!

The picture's real interest lies in detailing the villain's sadistic crimes, though, and this is rarely fun or edifying to watch.

Has moments of real visual creativity.

Shallow and sentimental in the sappiest Hollywood tradition.

The acting is weak, largely because many of the performers seem uncomfortable speaking English. The last half-hour works up a fair amount of action and suspense, though.

With the mounting number of first-rate, even masterly foreign-language films locked out of movie theaters due to wary distributors, it's worth pondering why such laughable dreck as German actor-writer-director Vadim Glowna's House of the Sleeping Beauties actually made it through.

A private eye enters a horrific world of degrading sex and bottom-feeding pornographers.

Not even veteran talents like Dukakis and Scheider can surmount the artificial dialogue, arbitrary plot twists, and wan humor of this disappointing comedy-drama.

I don't mind a movie where people spend a lot of time jawboning, but what they say had better be interesting. In Spinning into Butter we are spoon-fed the deep dark revelation that racism can exist as virulently in liberal environs as in reactionary ones. Alert the media.

Cumming's antic acting is the only asset of this boisterous comedy.

The Last Airbender is like a Care Bears movie that got waylaid in the fourth dimension. It's insufferably silly.

The Griswalds drive to Las Vegas "because half the fun is getting there," but the fun never begins in this disappointing sequel to the Vacation slapstick comedies.

It's a sort of soullessly cheerful cynicism that is about as far from Seuss as one can imagine.

A lovestruck Californian kidnaps a neighbor's dog as a way of getting her attention.

Sordid and sleazy, although the lead performances are hard to fault.

Different viewers might find different portions worthy of anything from zero to four stars, but anyone with a faint heart or weak stomach should stay miles away from it. [24 Oct. 1997, p.13]

In all it's a pleasant surprise if not a great comedy.

What ensues is a Halloween-style blood bath accompanied by graphic sex scenes.

There are a few amusing moments, helped by subdued performances from Affleck and Gandolfini, but this is no "Bad Santa" despite its obvious ambition to play similar holiday tricks.

The slasher-movie genre may never die, but can't its perpetrators think up variations more clever than this by-the-numbers rehash?

The acting is uneven and most of the romancing seems so mismatched.

The junior Giannini, who has inherited Giancarlo's handsome looks, portrays his mercurial character with energy and flair. Madonna doesn't. Indeed, it's hard to remember the last time a certified celebrity gave a performance so monotonous, unimaginative, and all-around tiresome to watch.

Lange and Paltrow give it their all, but they can't save this one from plot holes, continuity mistakes, and heartlessness.

Perry and Hurley don't have much chemistry, and the story is so dumb you might want to sue it for stupidity.

So stupid you'll wish you'd brought a duffel bag of your own.

This boatload of clichés is strenuously unfunny.

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]

This business of the 88 minutes ticking away is a pale imitation of the old "High Noon" ploy of playing out suspense in real time. After a while, though, I began to take a perverse pleasure in wallowing in the awfulness of it all.

Often trite and predictable but grudgingly likable in the end.

Everyone works hard, but the results are sadly short of style and personality or irony and intelligence.

Preposterous plot, bad acting, and dialogue that provokes more laughs than shivers.

Adam Sandler's creative songs and silly expressions on "Saturday Night Live" may have turned him into a celebrity, but this movie based solely on his antics doesn't work.

Paying homage to drug comedies of the '70s, Half Baked is high on getting high and low on laughs.

Beverly Hills Cop III is perhaps the dumbest of the cop trio. There are no surprises, there's no real police work to unravel, and there are no mysteries. It's all very predictable with lots of gunplay, noise, and blood. [3 Jun 1994]

Hop away from this one fast!

The thriller makes up in moody weirdness what it lacks in horror-tale originality.

Downright awful.

Veteran comics like Steve Martin and Madeleine Kahn wrestle valiantly with the incoherent story and ham-fisted dialogue, but it's a losing battle all the way. [30 Dec 1994]

A strong candidate for worst picture of the year.

Be warned that the results are in aggressively awful taste from beginning to end.

Fans of unregenerate underground moviemaking will have a ball.

Get cracking, filmmakers. It'll take a lot of doing to beat this creep-show for worst picture of the year. It's about a computer programmer who beats the devil in a series of spooky challenges. No fewer than seven directors worked on it, and it doesn't make any sense at all. [23 May 1985, p.25]

Pauly Shore is less a comedian than a class clown, and his dim-witted mugging makes Jim Carrey's antics seem creative triumphs by comparison. Vapid, vulgar, and more to the point, not funny.

The results are unbelievably tedious, but Mansfield buffs may find it intermittently worthwhile.

Made near the end of Buñuel's career, it's not his greatest movie, but it contains some of his most memorable moments.

With its skillful blend of documentary, confessional, and comic moods, this is one of the infrequent avant-garde movies that's as amusing and entertaining as it is artful and sophisticated.

This engaging 1966 comedy isn't de Broca's best movie, but it was so popular with American audiences in the late '60s that it's still one of the era's most fondly remembered cult classics.

Interesting as anthropology, although the subject won't appeal to many people.

Documentary about stock trading, with some vivid images but no clear perspectives or opinions on the material it presents.

The film is decidedly hagiographic but, in a time of heightened racial unrest, it’s worth being reminded of the fighter Ali’s origins.