Add a megadose of bombastic James Horner music and a perfunctory love-affair subplot and you have a movie that's its own worst enemy.

The result would be an important drama if the screenplay (based on an early Arthur Miller novel) didn't lapse into preachiness and imprecision at times.

Amiable, though much too long.

An unconvincing talkathon that might have worked better on the stage as a two-man showpiece.

Now that it is at last on screen, my reaction is ... what's all the fuss?

Another Stakeout boasts a fine cast, but the writing is so uneven and the plot so poorly developed that the film's few amusing moments get lost. The talents of Richard Dreyfuss and Emilio Estevez seem wasted on this lumbering farce.

In supporting roles, Gugu Mbatha-Raw as Rachel, the equally valiant house slave Newton makes his common-law wife, and Mahershala Ali as Moses, the leader of the renegade slaves, provide some powerful moments.

The good news is that, even though one must pace oneself through the dull parts, usually involving Mr. Popper's dullish family, he's in pretty good form whenever he's getting physical.

Wilkinson artfully deepens a character who in Wilde's original play was rather boobish. It's a marvelous performance in a pretty good film.

Wilson is pretty much the whole show. With nobody else around to steal from, he ends up stealing scenes from himself.

Very well acted and directed, if overlong.

As for me, I don't see why women being as slobby and gross as the guys is such a feminist breakthrough – especially since, as in Bachelorette, the slobbiness and grossness is witless.

Kevin Lima's feature-length cartoon has some funny moments, but why couldn't the gang at Walt Disney Pictures provide something for girls and moms to identify with, too? [05 May 1995, p.13]

This movie is "Finian's Rainbow" for dunderheads. Rudd has a few amusing moments talking to himself in a mirror (he's trying to convince himself he's a stud) but he would have been better off talking himself out of this film.

About the only thing I like about this movie is its shaggy, relatively apolitical stance. Instead of setting itself up as a brief for or against the Iraq war, it just moseys along without much on its mind except how to connect the dots in the plot.

Washington doesn’t look as if he’s having much fun, and who can blame him? Perhaps he agrees with me: Apocalypse movies, like apocalypse heroes, need some laughs, too.

The film also seems to end at least four times, which is three times too many. Better yet, it never should have started.

You don't see such feisty acting very often.

Content and style dovetail superbly in this offbeat drama, where images continually change in size and shape, evoking the story's message that human experience is always a pathway, not a destination.

The psychology of the story is shallow, but the action scenes pack a good visual punch.

The movie's gross-out effects are impressive but wearying. How apt that the director's name is Gore.

As slick and heartless as the original; the story has a few possibilies for irony and political commentary, but the filmmakers bury them in the general atmosphere of violence and manipulation. A few scenes are effective on their own terms, though, and Bridget Fonda does as much with her role as the heavy-handed screenplay allows. [26 March 1993, p.12]

This is a technological breakthrough, all right, but a breakthrough to what?

Peregrym is a fresh-faced beauty and Bridges is enjoyably cranky, but the film is as bland as an Afterschool Special.

Action freaks may enjoy the chasing and chomping, but there's no hint of human interest or moviemaking imagination.

The film's power grows from its dark-toned portrayal of the World War II era and from its evocative use of flashbacks, which show more interest in the characters' emotional lives than in story devices like surprise and suspense.

The filmmakers seem well in control of their chaotic material, but what can be said when the movie features wall-to-wall teenage alcohol abuse.

It’s an indication of how much this film needed a bright break in all the grim oppressiveness that when Mary-Louise Parker shows up in a giddy cameo as a foul-mouthed boozer, the audience suddenly lit up with laughter.