In short, let nothing deter you from staying home.

Should make about $750, which is how much they need to save the farm, but a little less than Disney CEO Michael Eisner needs to save his job.

All set-up, no soul... Nothing here is that inspired, that clever.

This new version, which retains nearly every character and echoes nearly every scenario, is somehow its complete opposite--a slight, breezy incarnation that tries like hell to dishearten, which only makes it disingenuous.

Slips by quickly enough, but it never engages our interest more than passingly.

To say it's better than it has any right to be gives the original too much credit and the remake not enough.

By the end the movie audience, like the electorate, is less satisfied than strung-out and exhausted.

Its loose-limbed sweetness and gruff irreverence are just right.

This is a brilliant and unpretentious movie to raise the bar for contemporary popular entertainment, designed for the upper-tier thinkers at the multiplex.

The delight of this awesome thriller is simply that Schwarzenegger--an old hand at this sort of running-around-shooting-henchmen thing--could easily sleepwalk through the movie...but he doesn't.

The only thing worse than second-generation Guy Ritchie is fourth-generation Quentin Tarantino, and this movie has the musty smell of 1995 all over it.

This film is no "Usual Suspects," because there is no twist, no gotcha.

Yes it's a "family film," of the sort we've become increasingly accustomed to these days; cute dogs for the kids to coo over, and a plot just complex enough to keep the parents who've accompanied them to the theater from dozing off.

Despite the tighter rewrite and the slicker production, it's obvious that Shimizu is still searching for what scares him, and until he finds it, he doesn't stand--ahem--a ghost of a chance of frightening us.

Even with so much in its favor, The Mummy seems to fall all too easily. If only generating a soul for the film itself were so easy.

The movie's not great, but Mom might like it.

Drowns in vanilla carnality.

The new version by Harold Ramis trots out a load of bargain-rack gags, tarted up with pricey effects for the A.D.D. generation. Woe to those who cannot leave well enough alone.

In the end, the filmmakers strike a bad bargain between action and myth: In their obvious attempt to shoo everyone into the tent--romantic and roughneck alike--they don't serve either end of the spectrum very well.

Among the several iterations of Jules Verne's novel about the inventor's adventures whilst traipsing through England, Asia and the Wild West, this new one is the least impressive and most depressive. Even the 1989 made-for-TV version starring Pierce Brosnan possessed more spark and steam than this lazy, lackluster take.

Perhaps realizing that rare performances in snoozers like "The Horse Whisperer" and "The Last Castle" weren't doing him (Redford) any favors, he seems to have entered a new phase in his career, with a wealth of old man roles now open to him. He was very good in last year's "The Clearing;" he's better in this.

If you're going to fall for this movie, you're going to have to buy not only the idea that adultery is excusable if you're "following your heart," but also that following your heart amounts to falling in love at first sight, a formulation that seems adolescent at best.

Carrey and the Farrellys are equal-opportunity offenders.

This sort of thing is the problem with making stuff up as you go along.

Emperor gives off a distinctly musty odor -- not least because Kline's character.

A bucket of crap, but at well under 90 minutes it's a small bucket, and half the crap is amusing.

It's just a familiar bore, offering chills and thrills only to those who have never seen a movie before.

The fact that Romance was written and directed by a woman doesn't make the film any better; it simply makes it objectionable on other grounds.

It is unfortunate that von Trotta does not trust her audience enough to think for themselves -- her themes are carved on a sledgehammer en route to our skulls.

An entertainment success, a triple threat of fresh writing, inspired directing, and, yes, good acting.

It's a skillfully made film, but not especially fun to watch, and the apparent thesis that poverty justifies such acts doesn't quite wash.

Is it worth the goofy characters and weak story for the effects and action sequences? Absolutely.

Its heart is in the right place, but it has no soul.

Nothing deeper than a stale retread, it seems. And this is coming from a critic who listed the original "Charlie's Angels" movie as one of the top five films of 2000.

Fortunately the film's humor kicks in with McKenzie Brothers Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas stealing the show as a dopey pair of moose. Could've done without Phil Collins's generic, annoying tunes.

The movie, which feels as amateurish as a student film made for cable access, doesn't deliver the goods; the gotcha moment never comes.

Never quite works, despite the wonderful performances or the decency in the screenplay's margins.

The movie remains engaging, with a couple of sequences verging on stunning.

All Sinbad has going for it is Pfeiffer's Eris.

If you've never seen a Sandler movie, however, this isn't the one to start with. Proceed only if you're sure you like the guy.

This trifle is better approached as a suburban haunted-house attraction thrown by enthusiastically confused teenagers. It's a little bit eerie, completely disjointed and sporadically amusing--kind of like "Lost in Translation," but with wanton slaughter. Do not expect more.

Actually quite amusing, thanks mainly to a script that keeps the gags flying so fast that even though so many of them are bad, they're quickly followed by something new, and occasionally something good.

If Chicken Little were in 3-D, shown in a theme park as you sit in motion simulators, the lame gags might not be so much of a problem.

Vertical Limit represents another kind of propaganda--namely the current Hollywood notion that the bigger and louder and longer a movie is, the more people will want to see it, even if that means getting numbed before your popcorn's cold.

Once more, Tim Allen drops a lump of coal down the chimney.

Sometimes the laughs here seem unintentional, but most giggles are properly earned, and the movie's fun and exciting if you can accept its inherent camp factor.

Turns out to be one of the most original and imaginative children's films in a long time.

It strains to be funny where the original's gags were efficiently deadpan, yet it's also so unbearably lazy, stooping to cliché and caricature when it backs itself into the shower.

When it comes to World War II movies, you may never have seen one like this before -- if only because it's like three different movies at the same time.

Any goy, too, can fall for this tripe, especially if they've a fondness for mawkish cliché, sitcom pacing, popcorn psychology, and lousy cinematography.

It's stunning, really, to consider how much time and expense went into something so chintzy and dull--a script full of non sequiturs shouted by a screen full of chum.

It never jells. Primarily, it can't rise above two major weaknesses: a plangent, plaintive script and the inadequacies of John Travolta.

Carrey's brand of exhausting physical comedy is a far cry from Segal's useful bewilderment, so this ride is both rougher and loonier.

Well acted by an unusually likable cast.

Really, what women want is what all of us want: a decent movie, something vaguely insightful and occasionally funny. This isn't that movie.

There are enough good scenes within the 94 minutes of The Guru to make an entertaining coming-attractions trailer.

Ryan's performance burns with a rare and passionate veracity. The other half of the delight comes from director Jane Campion, whose sensualist eye and scabrous heart infuse In the Cut with guts and glory.

Best of all, in this movie about high school boys, the high school boys sound and look quite authentic (Paul Dano and Chris Marquette are outstanding in this regard), not watered down as would be the norm.

The result is visually slick, almost shockingly simpleminded, kinda redundant and only adequately satisfying. Alas, for their dramatic wrap-up the Wachowskis' storytelling now feels less intriguing than merely dutiful.

Heartbreakers' implausible level of comedy just grows tedious, as it's neither smartly witty nor full-throttle absurd.

No one is more blameworthy than Witherspoon...With her newfound clout and charm, she could make better films; instead, she strolls up to the audience standing in line at the ATM and demands we fork it over or else.

This resolutely old-fashioned movie is less a drama of the streets than a kind of recruiting film.

This half-hearted, half-witted remake of Robert Aldrich's compelling 1965 tale of survival, ingenuity, and teamwork generates no heat.

Ultimately, though, it is Angelina Jolie who ends up stealing the show. As Mary, she lets her eyelids droop and her lower lip swell as if she were just so full of sex that she's almost drunk.

Again, Lohman's lack of power--and passion--saps the story of its life. It's a shame, because a bold performance would have given Firth and Bacon even more to work with, and the relationships between and among the members of that ménage à trois could have really begun to zing.

If you love the excitement of watching golf, this Damon-Smith bore is right up your fairway.

With Joseph Fiennes as the conflicted, frequently self-hating Luther, this historical drama/biopic offers a fairly thorough overview of the period (although it's weak on the "good deeds" angle) but is somewhat dry and weighted with significance.

Most of it is decidedly lame. The actors, however, are ingratiating.

Runs out of breath and collapses into a heap of feel-good endings that turn a soaring feeling into a sinking one. But by then, the audience that adores it will forgive it its sins.

I Am David is by far the best after-school special to hit the big screen this season.

While it's marvelously refreshing to observe Mother Nature obliterating L.A. and New York along with caricatures of ghastly world leaders, almost everything good is in the trailer, save perhaps brief run-ins with malevolent wolves and Ian Holm.

It's a workmanlike adventure yarn, intermittently reverent to the canon but not very inspired, and it must be said that Banderas is starting to show signs of wear.

As witch movies go -- even lighthearted, supposedly comic witch movies -- Practical Magic is conspicuously lacking in supernatural phenomena.

Immediately disarming for its candor, verve, and sheer nerve.

Trashes whatever spirited fun it initially established. Goodnight, Sweet Prince. Dream on.

That there's moral ambiguity to his actions represents some sort of step up from the cinematic norm. Alas, Christopher Walken has very little to do as Creasy's best buddy.

It wears out its welcome well before its halfway point, by which time you're either so tangled up in plot points you're strangling, or so bored you just wish you were being strangled.

To damn Herbie: Fully Loaded as soporific crap, as lazy profiteering, as yet another needless and cynical remake in a season populated by such con artists, would be as pointless as the movie itself.

Unlike some other soccer movies, there's no fancy editing -- excitement is generated strictly by the actual choreography and the commentary of an English announcer.

It should be said that Travolta delivers a wonderful performance that's lost in a mediocre -- and, at times, rather misogynistic and homophobic -- film.

Ultimately, the filmmakers build toward a reasonably satisfying "Twilight Zone" climax, only they crawl toward the ho-hum ending; the movie appears to have been written and edited in a swamp too.

When the movie works, it gleefully skewers the clichés of the buddy cop genre... When it doesn't work, it's exactly what it purports to be lampooning--a lame, boring cop buddy movie.

The result is something that feels very much like an overachieving made-for-TV movie--a history lesson dolled up like an action movie, with the action relegated to the final third, and even then, the battle is over before it really begins.

Funny and sort of creepy--a not bad little thriller with some peculiarly dated plot development.

Cox, bespectacled and deglamorized here, shows some acting ability, but by the time you get through this 78-minute bag of tricks, you could be suffering from a case of perceptual overload.

Unfortunately, the movie fails to fully make sense, which may be because it's based on a French novel (If Only It Were True by Marc Levy).

It's too turgid to awe the nonbelievers, too zealous to inspire and often too silly to take seriously, with its demonic hallucinations that look like escapees from a David Lynch film; I swear I couldn't find the devil carrying around a hairy-backed midget anywhere in the text I read.

Where are our Tracy/Hepburn screwball combos? Part of the appeal of "Wedding Crashers" was that Isla Fisher truly did have the comedic chops to match Vince Vaughn, and Just Friends suggests that Reynolds and Faris have potential greatness together too. Just not so much in this film.

The film is smart enough to aim for farce rather than whimsy or reality. The songs are still bland--"I hid the alarm clock," "too much lipstick"--but at least the characters are somewhat entertaining.

The dialogue is not merely tired but exhausted, as though its head has already hit the pillow and it's just "mm-hm"ing us before it falls asleep.

Unfortunately, Bullock and Affleck don't strike many sparks or produce many yuks…they're not exactly built for comedy.

The movie comes off as willfully eccentric when it should have been charmingly touching.

Helgeland makes a solid debut as director here, finding a new angle through which to view the Parker character, and doing so without exhausting the possibilities.

A strong contender for Worst Picture of All Time.

It's a kiddie comedy that really shouldn't be on the big screen at all; it has all the creative range of an Afterschool Special.

Not that there aren't funny moments in the film, but they're cobbled together so awkwardly that you'd never suspect the director had made a film before.

And so the chief complaint one can lodge against Lyne's film is central: It's not that funny. Which is another way of saying that, for all its controversy, it's not that daring.

It's all fairly brilliantly twisted, but it seems that series creator Don Mancini has utterly given up on scares -- there's only one decent shock toward the very end.