As a story, Mamma Mia! is a sham, a narrative so rickety it makes "Grease" seem like Shakespeare. It fails as a musical, too, since only about half of the songs have any bearing on the scene that preceded them.

It's all about making everybody happy. If that's not grounds for a good relationship, then I don't know what is.

Among the many problems with the Generation Acne romantic comedy She's All That is that a self-consciously stupid, 9-year-old TV series ["Beverly Hills: 90210"] has covered the same territory with more smarts, style and laughs, albeit the unintentional kind. This movie exists solely to snag a cut of the weekly allowance doled out to bored mall brats. And even they would probably prefer shopping. [29 Jan 1999, p.5G]

But if My Date With Drew is what passes for filmmaking these days, the movie industry is in more trouble than we thought.

Thoughtfully directed and co-written by Arie Posin, the film is not a ghost story, nor is it played for campy laughs, but its melodramatic subject matter flirts with Douglas Sirk territory — and sometimes just dives right into it.

What were charming once -- the clumsiness of Uys' style and the crudeness of his effects -- now seem quite tired: After all, he had the budget this time, and he has had six years to learn how to do things. It's as if Uys never quite understood what made The Gods Must Be Crazy so enchanting. [13 Apr 1990, p.G5]

The moral of Irreversible -- time destroys everything -- isn't nearly as profound as writer-director Gaspar Noé seems to think it is, which is why some critics have already dismissed the movie as the facile, misogynistic posturings of a provocateur.

The sins of the inspirational Saint Ralph are venial, but they undeniably prevent the small Canadian film from stretching beyond the boundaries of an After School Special.

Proves there are some things cartoons can't do better than live action after all.

An uncommonly playful fright machine -- a fun house factory of scares.

Casino Jack fails at its most critical mission: Laying out in clear detail exactly how and when Abramoff broke the law.

The acting is better than Ivy deserves. Barrymore is surprisingly good, bringing the right amount of sexuality and mischief to her performance without coming across as ridiculous. It's tough for someone known mostly as a child actor to break into more adult roles, but she pulls it off. [04 Jun 1992, p.F3]

Better Off Dead has the body of a tired teen comedy but the soul of an inspired student film; it's the first movie in a long time to interrupt itself periodically with flights of animated fancy. At one point, romantic foreshadowing is accomplished by a "clay-mation" sequence featuring cheeseburgers in love. At another, a lovesick teen draws a cartoon picture of his faithless girlfriend, and the drawing tells him to get lost. [17 Oct 1985, p.B6]

Despite its contemporary-sounding anti-French cracks, could easily have been made 20 years ago.

This engaging documentary is briskly funny.

The film's refusal to take its characters anything less than seriously makes it cut deeper than a Will Ferrell lampoon.

Deadly dull and as wooden as a hitching post, Quigley is set in the Australian outback where the mercury often tops 100 degrees, but there's no heat in this movie, no spark of ingenuity or life. [20 Oct 1990, p.E4]

No Small Affair, while no big movie, confirms that it is possible to tell a story about a kid in love without depending on the French-tutor contrivance or the girls'-locker- room giggle. [09 Nov 1984, p.C10]

Me Before You is a sugar-coated romantic bauble, not a gritty documentary. Giving into its pleasures is not for everyone, but its message — live boldly, as the movie’s hashtag encourages — is an admonition that’s awfully hard to argue.

The Fountain is probably too muddled and half-baked to even attain cult status -- but you can still see what writer-director Darren Aronofsky was striving for, and even if his reach exceeded his grasp, his intentions were both admirable and worthy of respect.

The effort is earnest, but the plot turns more and more implausible.

The movie is sloppy and scattershot, and proud of it. It wears its slipshod, anything-for-a-laugh structure like a badge of honor: Smith is nothing if not self-deprecating.

For all its respectable airs, The Accountant mostly induces shrugs. Sometimes, B-movies fare better when they settle for being their lowbrow selves.

If you don't have a dog waiting for you at home after seeing A Letter to True, you'll want one.

It's beautiful to look at, but there's little there to savor.

Jay McInerney's novel Bright Lights, Big City was hailed as a portrait of the vacuous, coked-out '80s generation. The movie is simply vacuous. The script, also written by Mc-Inerney, strips away the novel's witty and ironic voice. What is left is a vapid yet sentimental cautionary tale about the evils of drugs. Of course, drugs are terrible. But so is Bright Lights, Big City. [1 Apr 1988, p.C1]

Little happens that you don't see coming, down to which cast members will get picked off and in what order. It's a dumb action movie in a summer full of dumb movies, and yet it's always entertaining. And you won't really miss Arnold at all.

A lively, funny, imaginative film that should appeal to kids and their pet-loving parents.

If you can overlook that last little bit of sports fantasy, you just might like Just Wright.

The stupendously stupid The Program purports to detail one season in the life of the football team of Eastern State University as it struggles for a college bowl berth, but the players must overcome such inflated melodramatic claptrap it's a miracle they ever make it onto the field at all. [27 Sept 1993, p.C6]

The strength of the performances, along with the good will generated by these flawed but likable characters, carry the movie through.

Sreams its devotion to style over substance with slick action sequences, fast cars and breathtaking stunts.

Assassination Tango offers little heat. In dancing with death, Duvall stumbles a few too many times.

Wins you over with this bright sense of humor and its gentle, welcome message of tolerance and acceptance.

Indian Summer could have been just that kind of angst-fest. But writer-director Mike Binder (Coupe de Ville), a former stand-up comedian, nimbly sidestepped those maudlin pitfalls and, instead, made a frank, funny, down-to-earth comedy. [23 Apr 1993, p.G4]

A crowd-pleasing comedy that makes up for its formulaic, sitcom-ready premise with likable performances and an inviting sense of humor.

Fasten your seat belts and prepare to kiss reality goodbye, folks, because from here the movie launches into silly mob vs. nun chase scenes, an appearance by a Pope John Paul II look- alike and gobs of sentimental, syrupy goo -- the signature of director Emile Ardolino (Three Men and a Little Lady, Dirty Dancing). But don't be ashamed to laugh -- it's still a rollicking good time. [29 May 1992, p.G5]

Chuck Norris is also in this movie, although you should know that he gets roughly five minutes of screen time, half of those devoted to his telling of a Chuck Norris joke. That is as funny as the movie's self-aware humor gets.

If anyone tries to tell you how this one ends, blast 'em with a phaser. Set on stun, of course.

The dialogue is sparse but well used -- it's refreshing to see a movie where people don't feel compelled to talk all the time.

The technically well-made movie simply can't replicate the live experience of a Cirque show, and at just over 90 minutes, Worlds Away still feels long.

The charms of Lucía, Lucía rely heavily on the charismatic Roth, who is funny and warm and a lot of fun to watch as she embraces her new life.

There are not enough synonyms for ''bad'' to describe the pretension and utter banality of the masturbatory The Brown Bunny, a film so exhaustively awful even its creator Vincent Gallo once disavowed it.

Giles Walker's direction is TV-slick and the performances predictably smooth. But there is nothing here you haven't seen many, many times before. [12 Nov 1993, p.G18]

Campfire looks a bit drab, perhaps to show the dullness of Zionist life in the 1980s. But this doesn't take away from the poignancy of the film.

The film is not so much suspenseful as intriguing.

Lovelace is a timid gloss over on a hardcore subject — a movie that takes a wild true story and shoehorns it into a formulaic mold.

Parkland is wildly uneven, although compulsively watchable.

John Carter manages to be a ridiculous amount of fun, even if you are immune to the charms of Taylor Kitsch (Friday Night Lights) running around in what amounts to a stylish loincloth.

When Mulholland Falls should reverberate with complexity, it simply echoes other movies. It's a glossy tribute to film noir, not a memorable entry in the genre. It's too simple-minded, yet it leaves a heap of questions unanswered. [26 Apr 1996, p.5G]

Taken is nonsense, but it's terrifically entertaining nonsense.

You might call My Sister's Keeper manipulative, and you would not be inaccurate.

It's a testament to their performances -- and the spirit of this surprisingly raunchy, decidedly R-rated comedy -- that by the end credits, you've grown to like them a little bit. You just wouldn't want to live with them.

The script remains the big problem, however -- all its roots are showing, and they are very old. In Lucy's day, a story like this would end with restoration of the comfy stereotypes -- Dad would get his job back at the plant, enhanced by his new appreciation for what Mom has gone through, and Mom would forsake her business success, more sure than ever that her place is at the sink. That's just what happens in Mr. Mom. In Hollywood, time stands still. [27 Aug 1983, p.5]

The cast is impressive, and the story even soapier than "The Tudors," if you like that sort of thing.

Certainly, Lassiter is painless and periodically amusing. And it's so much bigger than TV. [22 Feb 1984, p.B6]

Reacher is so good at everything he does, and Cruise plays him in such a robotic manner, that the movie becomes a bit of a bore: The hero is practically omnipotent.

But Romeo Is Bleeding ultimately belongs to Olin. When she and Oldman finally begin to go at it, no holds barred, in the last 20 minutes, the film becomes an audacious free-for-all, a bloody battle of the sexes that reaches a frantic fever pitch that will leave you giddy. It is film noir at its funniest -- and darkest. [4 Feb 1994, p.5]

The whole thing means to come down to big, round tears and mass sniffles, but though Spielberg invokes as many golden-era cliches as he can recall, he never gets the romance really working. It's tough being compared to Spielberg, and perhaps unfair if you happen to be Spielberg, but this is easily his least substantial film to date. Some tears, yes. No sparks. [22 Dec. 1989, p.G5]

It's a ridiculous story to be sure, filled with holes and not remotely plausible, but director Mark L. Lester knows enough to keep the speed up, and the dumb stuff is flattened by action. It's the kind of movie in which the audience waits happily for the little heroine to be cornered by villains, all to cheer at the inevitable roast. Lester, at least, is stylish enough to get away with it. [12 May 1984, p.C1]

A revealing and bluntly honest portrait of a previously unknown filmmaker.

The movie is best when it sends up the whole culture of child stars and commercials -- "I wanna grow artistically," says one well-paid brat. "I wanna work with Michelle Pfeiffer." But it loses its edge, and soon Life With Mikey is awfully close to the thing it sets out to lampoon. [4 June 1993, p.G5]

Suffers from dialogue that often sounds like convenient exposition as well as from a climax that feels too pat and prosaic. But the film is peppered with small, explosive scenes that have a refreshing complexity.

Williams is wonderful. But though you can see Williams straining and heaving at the traces, working against the confines of a script he could have rewritten between scenes, he makes a character out of it anyway. [18 May 1990, p.G5]

True Story marks the directorial debut of Rupert Goold, a respected British theater veteran who also co-wrote the script and knows how to engage the viewer with simple scenes of two people talking (with a few modifications, this could have easily been a play).

Directed by Russell Mulcahy (the Highlander movies), the movie never generates enough suspense to keep the storyline moving. The visual effects are splashed about carelessly, weakening the would-be climactic showdown. [01 Jul 1994, p.G5]

It makes the predictable journey surprisingly fun and enjoyable.

It’s filmed with a sharp eye and filled with good performances.

As is usual for this durable genre, victim and villain are well matched. Though House on Sorority Row does not have a single screeching-cat red herring, and though power tools are not employed, it does have a classic of low camp, a scene in which a girl who has just been nearly brained by a falling corpse repairs immediately and alone to her bedroom, where she changes into a baby-doll nightie and stands with her back to an open window. [23 Feb 1983, p.B4]

Hellraiser III manages to make even the fearsome Pinhead himself seem like. . .well, a pinhead. Clive, it's time to give these characters a rest. [19 Sep 1992, p.E5]

Full of intriguing possibilities, it is a film propelled by a puff of hot air, not a tornado of brilliantly realized political, philosophical and artistic ideas. Sometimes, it is so embarrassingly bad that one can only laugh and wonder how Lumet could have missed the windmill by so much more than a mile. [31 Jan 1986, p.D9]

With such a large cast, none of the actors is able to turn her character into a fully realized person.

Honkytonk Man is Clint Eastwood's long, long ramble through the American Southwest in search of period, in search of character, in search of self-control. As a director, at least, he never finds the latter -- among the many things wrong with his latest film is that he apparently could not bring himself to slice away any of the flab. [22 Dec 1982, p.D18]

A coming-of-age film you've seen before. [20 Oct 1995, p.8G]

Red State is as profane and anti-establishment as any of his other films, but the stakes are infinitely higher this time: This Kevin Smith movie has an astonishing body count.

Everyone in Hit and Run is clearly having a good time. It's the audience that gets left out of the fun.

The film is far from perfect, but it's likely to inspire more than few quests for balance -- or at least a fabulous bowl of linguine.

Planet of the Apes is never quite boring -- the movie is constantly giving you something new to look at -- but it's still a disappointingly dull and underplotted ride.

It's not easy to forgive a movie that so ungratefully wastes its potential with such a poorly structured plot, but Shaft has a few redeeming moments up its sleeve after all.

Hollow and pointless.

As played by the sublimely dazed Keanu Reeves (Ted) and Alex Winter (Bill), the boys are appealing at first, but their witlessness wears thin quickly. So, too, the movie. Ignorance may indeed be a happy state, but you wouldn't want to live there, and even this short visit seems much, much too long. The film acknowledges its empty-headedness early, when the boys meet Sock-rates. [20 Feb 1989, p.C-6]

The best thing about this big, imaginatively detailed movie is its premise, which director Francis Lawrence, a music-video veteran, takes his time exploring.

This tale, about a young woman and her quest to become one of the knights of King Arthur's Round Table, turns out to be scarier than it is charming: a real shame, considering the effort and talent that has gone into the production. [15 May 1998, p.7G]

Fails to offer a single moment you don't see coming but its cast is appealing, and it provides a welcome respite from young wizards, talking robots that turn into trucks and other staples of this long, hot, boy-focused summer.

The running character of a dim-bulb scientist of Indian or Pakistani extraction, who is prone to malapropisms, badly accented English and Carson-esque wink-and-giggle innuendo, might not seem offensive in a better film. Here it seems designed only for cheap laughs. The laughs come. They are cheap. [09 May 1986, p.D5]

A thoroughly wholesome, if not particularly entertaining, experience. [17 Jul 1992, p.G5]

Benjamin's creative visual style isn't enough to lift a weak story. [18 Mar 1988, p.D7]

Unfortunately, Life After Beth starts feeling more conventional the wilder and darker it gets, and the laughs become more sparse as the movie winds to its bizarre and but unsatisfying conclusion.

The dynamic between mother and son is fascinating, with Blethyn creating a character who is more antagonist than villain.

There is no faulting the big set pieces, which are shot and edited skillfully. But without involving characters to go along with them, those sequences make for awfully empty movie calories.

It's not much, Boiling Point. But it's not what you expect, either. At this time of year, when the big news is Indecent Proposal, that's saying something. [19 Apr 1993, p.C5]

A formulaic and didactic but good-hearted and sometimes amusing underdog sports yarn and plea for social acceptance.

It's a pleasure to see acceptance portrayed so matter-of-factly. May never happen in our lifetimes, but Lesnick's vision of tolerance is a soothing thought, anyway.

At its best when it simply lets Hoffman and De Niro play off each other .

We're told that what matters about art is not the image but the emotion it provokes. Well, Godard's King Lear definitely provokes an undeniable reaction: the splitting headache. [17 Jun 1988, p.C5]

For the most part, Tombstone is inept. Some of the performances are wincingly bad: Dana Delany, playing a touring actress with the hots for Wyatt, is particularly embarrassing. Director George P. Cosmatos (Leviathan) firmly cements his hack status: He takes nearly an hour to get things rolling, then fails to build any sort of momentum. [25 Dec 1993, p.F1]

It's a handsome period piece and a decent character drama, and it has that Newman performance. But it never has enough bang for the buck, and that's too bad. [20 Oct 1989, p.G11]

It's a lot more entertaining than box office success "Scooby-Doo" and more honest, too. When Irwin plays out a scene with a reptilian, you can be sure the croc is not computer-generated.