It lives on its action and dies on its gab. It also would have been better without all those songs about catching the thunder and grabbing the lightning and going for the glory. They sound like a rejected ad campaign for Old Milwaukee. In movies like this, action is often enough--but here, it's just not radical.

Unfortunately, the film blunders into such an outlandishly dumb conclusion that you don't get a charge of surprise -- just a bad case of whiplash. [28 Mar 1986, p.16]

The Money Pit grows increasingly mechanical, both in its content and in the resolution of its plot, as the effects start overwhelming this essentially modest little romantic comedy.

But beware: "Hamburger" is the dregs of "Animal House" and "Police Academy" raked over again, with another passel of daffy, goofy, sex-crazed guys; bosomy, moaning sex-starved girls; screaming nerds; yowling dimwits and howling bullies... The script may set a record for misfiring gags and lewd puns. [3 Feb 1986, p.C7]

The most you can say for Police Academy 3: Back in Training is that it's no worse than "Police Academy 2" -- which was awful. [24 Mar 1986, p.Cal-7]

The ineptly told story features the hollow menaces, uninteresting villains, bland heroes, predictable confrontations and static animation that have become standards of the genre. [21 Mar 1986, p.17]

Unfortunately, the story, script, voice actors and animation all prove less flexible than the toys, and the film never turns into entertainment. GoBots are more fun to play with than they are to watch.

Gung Ho goes after that ever-so-elusive Capra-esque spirit of communal triumph over adversity, but both sides too often verge on stereotypes for this to pay off as richly as it should.

Crossroads needs a leap of faith to swallow it whole, to buy its Faust-like premise of a musician's pact with the devil played against the realism of a contemporary road movie, but director Walter Hill lays out reasons enough to make us want to make that leap.

In spite of a sturdy cast and dazzling production design, Highlander is stultifyingly, jaw-droppingly, achingly awful.[11 Mar 1986, p.5]

For a story about sexual awakening and discovery, Desert Hearts is a taut, fatally careful movie with no looseness--and no abandon--to it and no feeling for detail that would let these characters really live.

One of “Trouble’s” nicest gifts is a pair of lovers to sigh over, whose future you agonize about, lovers who can make each other roar with laughter while lovingly intertwined. How long since we cared anything about a couple on the screen?

Delightful... The film is buoyed by a captivating performance by Ringwald, who has an unerring ability to share her character's emotions with an audience, as if we were eavsdropping behind her makeup mirror. [28 Feb 1986]

Sanitized for our protection and in the hands of director Adrian Lyne, 9 1/2 Weeks is a swooningly silly cautionary tale about the bad and the beautiful; a pair whose sexual tastes might have surfaced after a night of watching "Bolero" on videocassette. [21 Feb 1986, p.1]

It's a cheap, easy rehash of Spielberg's "Duel" and "The Hitchhiker" (which Red may not have seen)--along with grabs from "Halloween" (the unstoppable fiend), "Jackson County Jail" (the innocent motorist driven outside the law) and "Straw Dogs" (manhood through blood rites). Nothing is original.

Despite its large scale, it plays like a formula TV movie. [14 Feb 1986, p.C4]

The movie is like the bikers; it's best and freest when it's just racing ahead. Whenever it stops, you ask too many questions.

Despite some exuberant football action, a pair of buoyant rock-sound-track montage scenes and a tidy, uplifting finale, Wildcats is a disappointingly timid fable. It’s refreshing to see a strong-willed female character like McGrath, who’s loaded with grit and determination. But she’s surrounded by so many cardboard figures--her ex-husband is a cowardly worm, her rival football coach a wild-eyed chauvinist--that her triumph has the hollow ring of comic melodrama.

A love of the world of movies permeates the first-class, crackling excitement of F/X, giving a rare dimension to this thriller.

It’s not only poignant but also fun and unabashedly entertaining in the way that “The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex” still is. And it does have it all: authentic, sumptuous 16th-Century settings awash with warm Tudor brick, a splendid cast adorned with jewel-encrusted costumes, palace intrigue and, best of all, a pair of star-crossed young lovers who are irresistible.

Mellow, beautiful, rich and brimming with love, "Hannah" is the best Woody Allen yet and, quite simply, a great film. [7 February 1986, Calendar, p.6-1]

For all its genuinely funny moments and its mix of outrageousness and insights, Down and Out remains curiously unsatisfying in the way it resolves the Nolte character.

There's nothing wrong with Hollywood's obsession with making '80s updates of the Horatio Alger story. But Youngblood doesn't come close to capturing the spunk or spirit of youthful dreams.

It’s a story idea that seems dubious at first, but manages to flesh out wondrously--mostly because scenarist Ron Shelton has such a wickedly tight grip on the absurdities and dynamics of small American cities.

If power is the ultimate aphrodisiac, why is Sidney Lumet’s Power the sexless diatribe that it is, all high-tech visuals and no emotional grounding? Its sole juiciness comes from Gene Hackman as a raffish Southern media consultant, well-cured in bourbon and branch water. The outlandish daring of his performance is almost rave-up enough to recommend the movie. Almost.

It’s cute and high-spirited, and it shows some talent and verve. Watching it, you feel that Beaird is capable of something really good; even when his material goes stale and tasteless, there’s a joie de vivre in his direction.

Iron Eagle has an unintended hilarity that builds and builds. But don't take this as one of those so-bad-it's-good endorsements: The film is a total waste of time.

A clunky, poorly executed shocker.