Add a lot of dull acting -- except Sir Ian McKellen and Andy Serkis -- and you have an uneven movie with yawns aplenty.

The astonishingly inept finish could serve as a primer in screenwriting classes on how not to wind up a family drama.

If there is to be a sequel to this thudding slab of cacophony, why not just go all the way and make John McClane a superhero?

Bland, amiable, innocuous.

The story often seems unfocused, and the talented cast doesn't appear to be fully in synch with its heart-wrenching material.

The only aspect that emerges a winner is the gorgeous Mediterranean scenery.

It's so slavishly similar to its predecessor - right down to the symbolic lettering on Marion's license plates - that there's little to spark fresh discussion except the acting.

The violence is cartoonishly garish and the yuks are few. Crowe, looking (deliberately I presume) flabby and somnolent, is more dead than deadpan, and Gosling, who appears at times to be doing a Lou Costello impression, is, to put it mildly, not in his element.

The picture almost overwhelms you with sheer niceness. Unfortunately, this effect doesn't last; eventually the movie goes too far and overdoses on its own saccharine. [2 May 1989, Arts, p.11]

Always is a nice try for Spielberg, and the cast gives it a game try... The movie's generally dull effect makes it clear, however, that Spielberg still has some maturing to do before he's ready to scan the depths of human - not to mention cosmic - psychology.

Closer to an infomercial than a serious study, but it serves up plenty of rowdy humor.

It's fun to see the regular gang on hand for new adventures, joined by fresh characters who add touches of novelty and spice. But the secrets in this chamber aren't all that amazing once you get a glimpse of them.

No "JFK," but the story is weirdly compelling when it focuses on the journalist's growing paranoia as he plunges ever more deeply into a world of conspiracies that may or may not really exist.

Even in a misfire like The Happening, Shyamalan has a fine feeling for dread. He knows how to creep you out. But he has a tin ear for acting.

Brest deserves credit for letting the story unfold at a thoughtful pace, but the drama falls apart in the last half-hour, gushing with exaggerated emotions and abandoning its fairy-tale premises for an unconvincing feel-good finale.

It’s gross, all right, but rarely funny – unless jokes about alcohol-laced breast milk is your thing.

Taking a cue from the “Batman” series, the film is dark and thudding and overlong.

Its view of spiritual healing is closer to Spielberg fantasy than religious insight. Still, its good acting and good intentions will be enough to please many viewers.

Labors mightily to be as offensive and obnoxious as possible. It's inventive in an idiotic sort of way, though, and pauses occasionally to make serious points about movie violence and censorship.

Replete with boisterously unfunny black slapstick.

That may enough to pique your curiosity. It did mine, for a while, until it didn’t. To paraphrase what Brahms once told a young composer, what’s original in the film isn’t very good, and what’s good in it isn’t very original.

At least “Hidden Figures” was savvy enough to please its crowds. A United Kingdom, with its saintly good folk and sneering bad folk emptily exhorting, is closer to a dry historical tutorial.

Because most movies about Holocaust saviors feature Jews as victims rather than as rescuers, Walking With the Enemy, by contrast, has a special cachet. But the film is as dramatically inert as its origins are inspirational.

The movie is all nuance and it continually wafts away into artiness.

It's rare for an Egyptian movie to look so closely and unflinchingly at class conflict and other forms of social disarray, but lively acting keeps the story engaging even when it wanders and meanders.

The screenplay has some amusing punch lines, and Samantha Mathis steals a scene or two as a park ranger who never expected so much excitement on her usually peaceful turf. [9 Feb 1996, p.13]

The film has so many moodswings that watching it induces whiplash, and just about everybody in it, from Winslet on down to Judy Davis, playing the dressmaker’s crotchety mother, flagrantly overdoes it.

A deluge of funny, inane jokes.