With an exciting way out, the audience would have gladly overlooked all the loose ends from earlier in the movie. But the way Hall plays it, he undermines the early style and intelligence of his all-black action movie, taking audiences for the wrong kind of ride in the end.

One shallow film, that quickly returns to where it started: Zero.

Merely adding an older generation of lovers to a love story does not make your romance one for the ages. Doesn’t even make it "The Notebook."

What you don’t expect is camp. The Counselor is more "Wild Things" than "No Country for Old Men", with which it shares a border town setting. But at least "Wild Things" knew what it was. The Counselor treats its material seriously and seems to have no idea it’s a joke that can’t even muster up a bit of smarty-pants Tarantino cleverness or energy.

The best thing you can say about Scooby-Doo is that Matthew Lillard makes a really, really good Shaggy.

Filmmaker Christopher Cain has turned a national tragedy into a teen romance, and not in a grand, entertaining, "Titanic" way.

A $100 million production of a 10-cent script, is so clunkily written, so bereft of any engaging ideas or emotions, you'd think De Palma would have sneered at it on first reading and passed

The explanation for all this mayhem eludes me, and even a lame last-minute twist isn't enough to cover the fact that Jigsaw ain't as clever as the movie thinks he is.

Maybe there's a good movie to be made about the affair between Franklin Delano Roosevelt and a distant cousin. I wouldn't bet on it, and Hyde Park on Hudson isn't it in any case.

For all of 10 minutes, Gray Matters looks like it might have accomplished the impossible: uncovering a romantic-comedy scenario audiences haven't seen a million times before.

What we are not spared is the sort of trite movie that lacks the backbone of any good dysfunctional-family comedy: a thread of the universal amid the absurdity.

A compendium of missed opportunities, uninspired action and clichés so tired, you wish the screenwriters had called 911, too.

If you liked the meat of Kramer vs. Kramer, the reasoning goes, this movie should be the sauce. Too bad. Irreconcilable Differences, the latest comedy by the husband-and-wife writing team that simmered away schmaltzily in Private Benjamin, has its seasonings awry. [28 Sep 1984, p.B1]

How High is not a particularly good movie, but then again it's not trying to be. It's a project by two B-list rappers seeking to extend their music careers in the way of stars like Will Smith, Ice Cube and Tupac Shakur.

A cliché-ridden, condescending and ham-handed film that clumsily fails to bring to life what should be an interesting story. You might say none of its punches even comes close to connecting.

Amounts to Chicken Soup for the Soul-style torture -- unless you like that kind of thing.

The Search for Spock should be great fun for Trek fans; it's splendid junk when it works. But if you can't hum the theme from memory, Trek III is likely to be just another way to kill two hours. [1 June 1984, p.D1]

Mediocre.

All its freewheeling makes for a really "moving" movie, one in which the big chase scene involves, predictably, a car and a bike. But there's not much else to it. [21 Feb 1986, p.6]

The whole thing feels at least three summers too stale.

In the end, Wendy and Hiro lose their identities in each other's cultures -- an interesting premise for a movie. However, this potentially dramatic point suffers from a badly paced script, and acting that leaves you wondering where the characters are. [15 Apr 1988, p.C12]

What's missing is some faith in the audience's intelligence and, more importantly, the jokes.

A lackluster holiday-theme comedy featuring production design half a notch above a snow globe and a star who doesn't so much act as revive a well-worn persona.

Crudup is about as effective as anyone could be in the dreary World Traveler, but he can't keep this shallow, pretentious film from wallowing in banality and staggering self-indulgence.

The Lake House overflows with heart-stopping thrills, if by ''thrills'' you mean ''watching attractive people wait around for letters to be delivered by mystical forces.'' Which, come to think of it, makes this romantic melodrama sound a lot more interesting than it is.

Whether his character is happy, sad, angry or scared, Spade affects precisely the same knowing smirk and sarcastic delivery. This one-note style makes him a funny stand-up comedian. But in a role, it's usually pure amateur hour.

Unfortunately, this dimwit concept barely has enough spark to power a single strand of Christmas lights, much less rival the classic-by-comparison "National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation" in side-splitting Yuletide snafus.

In Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters, choosing the dumbest character is a colossal task.