The melancholy in this film is just as trumped up as the frenzy.

The film rapidly devolves into a lame buddy picture, part thriller, mostly goof.

Too bad director John Carpenter doesn't match this tantalizing premise with snappy, thoughtful filmmaking; long stretches of the movie are trite and silly.

This one doesn't have enough zesty ideas to revive the breed.

Shyamalan is a one-trick pony who needs to find a new rodeo.

Vitkova’s direction is big on long lingering shots of dreariness. With a 2-1/2-hour running time, that’s a lot of dreariness.

The characters who come off best in Dinner for Schmucks are those dead mice.

Sean Penn is one of those actors, like Nicolas Cage, who is best (sometimes worst) when he's over-the-top. Unlike Cage, Penn doesn't pour himself into dreadful commercial vehicles. No, his dreadful movies are usually not destined for the multiplex. Case in point: This Must Be the Place.

Just in case we don’t register the mismatch, Rogen is outfitted to look especially shlubby, and he sports an unbecoming beard that never comes off. With his crack timing, he still manages to get a few laughs, but he would have gotten a whole lot more if the jokes were any good. Theron, meantime, is photographed in full glamour mode throughout. This is probably just as well, since, as an actress, she doesn’t appear to have a comic bone in her body. Therein lies the true mismatch in this coupling.

It's disconcerting to see Virginia Madsen, who was so marvelous in her 2004 comeback role in "Sideways" reduced to playing the terrified wife here.

Was Paper Man worth making? Captain Excellent and I would probably differ on that one.

The unchanneled energy of Robin Williams can't redeem this messy yarn.

It’s impossible to take this movie seriously, certainly not as seriously as it takes itself.

At some point in their careers, most male actors want to play (a) Hamlet, and (b) a hit man. I hope that Clooney has gotten "b" out of his system.

There is one bit of good news. For all you abominable snowman fans out there, "The Mummy" is filled with yetis. And, boy, are they ever angry.

It's a lot easier to follow than "Syriana." But intelligibility is about the only thing this international thriller has going for it.

As the gambler who needs his basketball phenom brother to shave points, Whitaker has some expressive scenes, and Roth knows how to make malice gleam. But almost nothing else in this movie does.

So hyperfrenetic that, in the end, you wonder if the Wachowskis aren't trying to pull off an elaborate hoax – a deranged techno fantasia posing as retro-ish family fare.

This is a funny idea, but the movie is too thinly written to build any real credibility, and the cast rarely seems in tune with the vapid vulgarities that dominate the dialogue.

This semiexpressionist fantasia is a botch.

Although the first hour builds effective suspense, the story sags into a warmed-over combination of The Silence of the Lambs and both versions of Cape Fear, and the violent climax looks like it was shot in an Everglades theme park. [17 Feb 1995, p.13]

What begins as healthy skepticism in Mr. Pyne's screenplay is subjected to so many twists that it grows into sour cynicism, spread thinly over so many characters and events that it los es its impact...This isn't the first time that shallow notions of entertainment value have taken over what could have been a thought-provoking thriller. It's too bad the strengths of "White Sands" aren't parlayed into a more meaningful experience.

Directed by Cooper, who also co-wrote the script with Josh Singer, the film serves up so much Sturm und Drang about the great man’s messed-up private life that it barely bothers to explore his creative genius.

It's not easy to sit through the movie spawned by this notion, though, proving once again that a picture can be simultaneously high in concept and low in entertainment value. [18 July 1996]

It falls short of Assayas's most inventive work, but reconfirms his ability to ferret out hidden facets of the personalities he explores. [09 Jul 1999, p.14]

Miss Firecracker is a movie that tries too hard. You want to like it, but in the end it just tires you out.

Stephen Fry gives a convincing performance as Oscar Wilde in this biopic based on the 1987 Richard Ellmann biography. But the film focuses less on Wilde's talents as poet and playwright and more on the breakup of his marriage and family as a result of his infatuation with Lord Alfred "Bosie" Douglas. [12 Jun 1998, p.B2]

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