Dallas Observer's Scores

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For 1,518 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 48% higher than the average critic
  • 3% same as the average critic
  • 49% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 5.8 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Movie review score: 59
Highest review score: 100 Final Destination 3
Lowest review score: 0 How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 678 out of 1518
  2. Mixed: 604 out of 1518
  3. Negative: 236 out of 1518
1518 movie reviews
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  1. The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio
    The film congeals from dripping sentimentality into emulsified schmaltz when it brings in the actual Ryan family, all 10 children (now in their fifties and sixties), for a final scene. The intentions are clearly honorable, and we certainly wish these people well, but this isn't a memorial service, it's a movie.
    • 34 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Big Momma's House 2
    This is a sequel so bad that even Cedric the Entertainer and Anthony Anderson didn't return for it, let alone Terrence Howard and Paul Giamatti.
  3. Magnolia
    A brilliant piece of garbage -- mesmerizing, but only because you can't believe someone has the temerity to put so much into so little.
  4. Uptown Girls
    Seems far too familiar for comfort. "About a Boy," anyone?
  5. Rebound
    Rebound isn't funny.
  6. Raising Helen
    Sitting through Raising Helen is an exercise in frustration, because somewhere inside this big heap of Hollywood nothing is a something (someone, actually) worth saving and savoring. Her name is Joan Cusack.
  7. Underclassman
    Some fairly standard shenanigans ensue, and when the clichéd high school culture clash stuff stops, there's clichéd cop movie stuff going on.
  8. Anywhere But Here
    Slick, glossy, and artificial.
  9. The Other Side of the Bed
    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.
  10. The Santa Clause 2
    Once more, Tim Allen drops a lump of coal down the chimney.
  11. The Honeymooners
    No less amusing than an average sitcom, but that's certainly not reason enough to buy a ticket.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    That Thing You Do!
    That Thing You Do threatens the shameless stereotypes it constructs with cats' claws, but when the deserving targets present themselves at their most vulnerable, the movie rolls over and expects audiences to stroke its tummy.
  13. Anything But Love
    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.
  14. The In-Laws
    It winds up like all Hollywood comedies these days--merely resembling something funny.
  15. Lake Placid
    The only genuine surprises on hand are the few moments when the film defies the expectations that have been programmed into our collective neurons by the past 25 years of horror movies.
  16. Excess Baggage
    Excess Baggage, Alicia Silverstone's first feature from her First Kiss Productions, turns out to be a rather shaggy and uninvolving jaunt.
  17. The Grudge
    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.
  18. Girl, Interrupted
    Doesn't come close to matching the emotional depth and power of Frank Perry's 1962 "David and Lisa," the most involving and affecting film I've ever seen about teenagers and mental illness.
  19. High Tension
    High Tension often feels like a ’70s exploitation movie in the best sense; unfortunately, the ending is so bad that it mars everything that comes before.
  20. Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest
    Whatever goodwill one harbored toward the first Pirates film is quickly dashed by its sneering successor, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, which is less a film than a two-and-a-half-hour trailer for the final installment in this accidental trilogy.
  21. End of Days
    Nothing worse than a silly movie that takes itself seriously, that bores us to death while we wait for the finale that comes too late.
  22. Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life
    Beneath its satisfactory chops this movie -- like Ms. Croft herself -- is stuffy and soulless.
  23. 13 Going on 30
    What could have been an engaging, maybe even enlightening story about the unfairly high price a woman pays for conducting herself like a man winds up as nothing more than a worthless, harmless and ultimately charmless piffle.
  24. Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World
    A particularly painful event for those of us weaned on Brooks' earliest films, Saturday Night Live shorts and vintage clips of his deadpan standup appearances. It contains precisely two funny moments.
  25. Margaret Cho: Assassin
    It's hard to see why her audience seems so much more rabid than that of other, funnier comics. The secret seems to be in her appeal to the gay community.
  26. Dark Blue
    We have heard this song before, know it by heart (sadly, as film still can't keep pace with real-life headlines about fake drug busts and a shady LAPD), and still filmmakers can't resist its rhythms.
  27. Laws of Attraction
    Nothing about Laws of Attraction is remotely original; even its title has the dull ring of the generic, like "Opposites Attract" or "He Said, She Said." See it or don't. You will never notice the difference.
  28. The Way of the Gun
    This film is no "Usual Suspects," because there is no twist, no gotcha.
  29. Beyond Borders
    It's not a bad film, exactly, just a confused one, too violent to be a straight romance and too focused on aid relief to be an ass-kicking action flick.
  30. Forces of Nature
    Unfortunately, Bullock and Affleck don't strike many sparks or produce many yuks…they're not exactly built for comedy.
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