Does have its share of bona fide chuckles, but it falls shy of its possibilities.

What we have here is a small story in an oversized setting.

It's blatantly manipulative pairing of an adorable young boy and a selfish, honesty-challenged older woman [is] so calculating that I could never get emotionally involved.

This is basically a movie about one neurotic woman and her neurotic L.A. life. .

With any luck, Body Shots will quickly slide into video obscurity.

It's a notch above average, but Whatever It Takes can't get too far above that notch.

You'll laugh, but you'll hate yourself by the time you're out of the theater.

The only thing moviegoers will hate more than the phony, faux-felt conversations of About Alex at its worst is the unfulfilled promise its high points suggest when it’s at its best.

The film looks horrendous, poorly composed and staged, and the rhythm staggers.

It limps, not gallops, across the screen for what seems an interminable stretch of time and leaves the viewer with precious little to show for the experience.

Just because you can make a movie in a day doesn't necessarily mean moviegoers should take an hour and a half to watch it.

The scene doesn't amount to much more than a logical extension of its lightweight premise.

Obvious in its observations, predictable in its conclusions, and a little dull in the telling.

What on earth is Stockard Channing doing in this mess?

The sex we see in Lies does not feel in any way enticing; the protagonists are left seeming pathetic by the end of the film, and few viewers are likely to go scavenging for sticks after leaving the theater.

Regretfully, the beginning of this movie is as good as it ever gets.

This much-anticipated but terribly underwhelming black comedy represents a seriously squandered opportunity.

The heart of this movie isn't two sizes too small; it's just slightly misplaced.

The adherence to specific facts and actual events hampers the film, as it often does biographical movies.

Maladies is at least watchable, though just barely.

Breaks no new ground and is tedious in the extreme.

It's only when you see the movie that you discover how completely the film misses opportunities to develop these ideas into anything like movie comedy.

It's all quite precious, just not in a good way: "Postmodern" to a fault, deeply shallow, infuriatingly trite.

Even on its own terms, it stays sluggish.

Eastwood, who once upon a time was a flavorful director, is working in movie-of-the-week mode here. Cheesy, direct, bland.

Rob Schneider's stab at an "Ace Ventura"-like gamble for stardom.

The execution of that script – is so clumsy and over-written that nothing in it sticks. There’s a symphony of visuals here, and big strange ideas, but when it comes to the actual characters, we get automatons sleepwalking through clichés.

Wrought with pretension -- and a blind eye to its own exploitation.

A skim-milk version of a yuppie romance.

Atrocious bit of by-the-numbers screen filler. And anyone who easily lapses into sugar comas is advised to stay far, far away.

Unfortunately, whenever the story quiets down for exposition or to move the plot forward, it all becomes a grinding and often confusing bore.

Steadfastly conventional.

The film is confusingly and sloppily put together, edited down to the point that the few genuine jokes of Let’s Be Cops are given precious little time to breathe, before zipping into the next sequence of increasingly irrational events.

Tina Fey is in the film, for heaven’s sake, and I love her to pieces, but by now we know to expect something humdrum when she’s on a movie screen.

A slumming Spike Lee is still better than most directors at the top of their game, but Oldboy isn’t just Lee’s worst movie, it’s practically his “Wicker Man”.

While the art of action filmmaking depreciates, Harlin remains steadfast in his classicism, even if the movie doesn’t have the foundation to support him.

Even the love story doesn’t work, because Moretz and Blackley exhibit zero romantic chemistry, and it’s never exactly clear why the pair love each other so much.

The absolute antithesis to the pioneering punk spirit it tries to portray.

In fact, The Internship rivals the aggressively bland “Larry Crowne” for sheer tepidness, if not worse due to the exhaustive product placement for a company whose real-life presence is unlikely to soon wane.

There is a legitimate film in here somewhere, buried deep beneath the rubble of its terrible script and editing.

Not every book should be made into a film and, as appears to be the case with Winter’s Tale, not every book can be (especially this one).

Hollow, uninteresting and false.

The Smurfs 2 is not so much of a film as it is a collection of images and sounds that bludgeon you.

A shapelessly propulsive mess of pop psychology and poor drama.

The first sixty minutes of Pompeii are awful, bordering on unwatchable... The final forty-five minutes of the movie however are, by sheer force of will, irrefutably entertaining. At least there’s raining death in the form of fireballs smashing up the place.

A film that inserts banal plot devices and endless cutesiness in place of where the “good parts” should be.

The sound is great, the explosions are great, the look and feel could have been turned into something special. It’s the words and plot that are huge negatives here.

Thanks for Sharing can’t quite find its footing as either a drama or a comedy, and near the end it’s actively sliding off the rails.

Sound nonsensical? It is.

Not recommended for anyone but the hardiest of animation completists, this one is a definite skip. There’s nothing to note, nothing to grasp, nothing in which to find mirth. You could Escape from Planet Earth, but you’re better off just ignoring it.

An active affront to logic, placing us in a world we firmly know doesn’t exist.

Like a swollen boxer's eye, it should have been cut.

Embarrassing and weird.

The Wolverine reveals itself to be a film in desperate need of a point, in dire need of consequences and in a wandering search of any semblance of emotional weight.

Not a very good movie; it's sentimental, pandering and psychologically anorexic.

Too self-consciously dark, too aware of its long, murky, art-designed descent into the underbelly of America's addictive personality.

Limp direction, laughable production values, accent-heaving acting and dialogue and more lumps than three-day-old oatmeal.

Stardom just doesn't have enough anger or conviction to carry it to a satisfying finish.

Nymphomaniac Vol. 1 is the worst thing Lars Von Trier has ever associated himself with.

The fact that isolated bits are amusing shouldn't keep us from strongly noting that this movie really is pretty awful -- not at all worthy of guilty pleasure status.

Afailed attempt at a hipster screwball comedy. Very failed.

So relentlessly vanilla that it never springs to life.

Loses touch with its characters.

Seems to be an exercise not unlike the phone-booth stuffing of the '50s; namely, let's see how much plot we can fit into a movie before it bursts.

Full of sound and fury, signifying absolutely nothing, End of Days is the loudest and least of the year's end-of-the-world movies.

Ephron is still a director whose movies veer uncomfortably between the good -- make that adequate -- "You've Got Mail", the bad "This Is My Life" and the ugly Lucky Numbers. Pity.

Mangold ultimately can't displace memories of "An Angel at My Table," "Lilith," "The Snake Pit," "I Never Promised You a Rose Garden" and other, stronger accounts of young women placed in mental institutions.

A dud. Neither sweet nor low-down enough by half.

Lurches on for the better part of two hours with a ludicrous plot and even worse dialogue, interspersed with what look like excerpts from a music video made by some naughty Catholic-school graduates.

It's very much like a porn film without the porn, and that's about as bad as it gets.

It's insulting and devalues the experience of watching not just this film but all films.

Drop Dead Gorgeous eventually shows that it doesn't like anybody -- in the movie or in the audience.

About an hour after you've seen it, you'll already be fuzzy on just who was screwing who, and why

Vatel is really about production design, so if you're not absolutely passionate about 18th century table-settings, wigs and bodices, you might as well just stay at home and watch the Food Channel.

Stretched too thin, looks cheap, and can't quite go the distance.

Gun Shy can't rise on wobbly legs, and its real potential is lost for good.

The film isn't very good. The Million Dollar Hotel is an uneasy melding of Hollywood shtick and art-house sensibilities.

Appears to be several different movies spliced together, with unfortunate results.

But as objectionable as its subject matter is, the most objectionable thing is that it's not funny.

The movie is a mess.

A big disappointment.

Simplistic and non-controversial, and thus is virtually guaranteed commercial success.

Recycled "Steel Magnolias."

Utterly unnecessary sequel.

Looks plain silly without an appropriate tone or sustaining context.

Hopefully, the next time around, Chadha's imagination will be in the service of not just excellent casting and directing, but a script to match those other cinematic components.

The screenplay is far too obsessed with the setup, and not at all concerned with making the villains even the least bit believable or scary.

An amazing compendium of dumb behavior, bad dialogue, and incoherent direction.

Overpraised, intellectually soft, narratively unfocused, and thematically ambivalent.

Derivative, cliché-ridden and old hat.

In all, this film is a major disappointment with a few powerful highlights.

There is no obvious reason for the film's meandering existence: it's a series of beautifully photographed postcards of Africa.

It has every element necessary to be a classic, and it never comes anywhere near achieving that potential.

Never more than a dull, paint-by-numbers, overly literal transcription of the book.

Misbegotten comedy-drama.

Mud-stained, blood-soaked and completely useless.

Computer technology may be the actual phantom menace, after all.

The humor is, at best, thudding. At its worst, it's breathtakingly stupid and offensive.