In short, this isn't a poignant drama about courage and imagination -- it's a contrived fantasy about courage and imagination.

The funny scenes are as far apart as oases in the Sahara. [22 May 1987]

Amanda Plummer is even more weirded-out than usual as a serial killer wandering through England with her sadly befuddled girlfriend. [10 May 1996, p.13]

The nasty, sometimes violent story was written by Christian Forte, a newcomer who is clearly under Quentin Tarantino's unpleasant spell, and directed by Kevin Spacey, an unusually gifted actor who doesn't yet show any special talent for filmmaking.

Uninspired thriller-comedy.

The comedy isn't quite as crude as it sounds, but there's not much of value here beyond a little lively acting.

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

Cartoonish effects and overacting make this more corn than catnip.

Peter Segal's comedy has a few witty moments surrounded by a lot of silliness.

"The idea evolved and expanded," he (Snyder) says, "and took on a life of its own." Unfortunately, all of that life must have dribbled away as the project developed, because the resulting nonsense has none.

Moves at a lumbering pace, peppered with ungainly gags and dramatic moments with little emotional power. The ironic commentary on show-biz superficiality is sabotaged by Niccol's failure to make his own story seem real.

Don't be taken in by Taken.

Lively, colorful, violent, stupid.

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.

When promising independent filmmakers decide to jump on the bandwagon and pump up the gore, the results are sure to be touted as visceral and unflinching. Don't be fooled. Kramer has even commented that the movie should be viewed as a modern-day Grimm's fairy tale. It's grim all right.

The special effects are extra special. The screenplay is idiotic, though, and Diesel speaks his dialogue like a Sylvester Stallone clone who never finished third grade.

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

The movie is designed to show off Liotta's acting skills, but pointless mayhem and sheer nastiness crowd out any virtues it might have had.

Rarely do the well-financed wizards at Walt Disney Pictures cook up a movie this badly written, acted, and directed.

Crash-lands as disastrously as the heroes and never quite recovers its wits.

The dialogue is dumb ('zilla has the best lines, "arrrrrggh" and "maaroarrr"), New York is waterlogged, and Godzilla isn't on screen enough.

All I can say is, I certainly hope this dreary, bleary comedy doesn’t end up serving as a referendum on anything. That would be a disservice to women, not to mention movies.

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

The overlong comedy has few laughs and flirts far too much with racist, homophobic humor. A waste of a fine cast.

The only admirable aspect of the comedy is its insistence on the stupidity of racial prejudice. American moviegoers must be desperate to hear that message if they're willing to sit through so much ridiculous horseplay in order to receive it. [01 Jul 1993, p.12]

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

The bad thing about A Guy Thing isn't the talent of its stars but the warmed-over triteness of the material they're forced to work with.

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.