Camp classic? You bet.

Instead of watching a professional actor pretending to be intellectually disabled, we're watching a jackass pretending to be a dimwit pretending to be intellectually disabled.

Beaches is the never-less-than-maudlin soap opera about two childhood pen pals who meet again as adults, enjoy triumphs and endure failures, and wind up watching their story climax via a Fatal Illness straight out of Terms of Endearment. It's what used to be called a "women's picture." [13 Jan 1989, p.C5]

The design of the film is breathtaking at times, veering from the jagged hyperbole of German expressionism to the drolleries of English comedy at its most daft, if not most broad. [7 Feb. 1992, p.G5]

What ensues is an uneasy mix of farcical slapstick and comedy of errors with a violent, blood-soaked tale of inner-city crime.

But we must admit, if a bit shamefully, that we laughed heartily during big chunks of Tommy Boy, thanks primarily to Farley. The charismatic oaf is at his best on SNL when playing eager-to-please dolts blissfully unaware of their utter incompetence and stupidity, and that's what Farley is here. And he runs with it. [31 Mar 1995, p.4G]

It's the smartest stupid movie of the summer. [5 Aug 1994, p.G5]

Cop II doesn't sizzle like the original. It plays like a movie made by the numbers, an excuse to trot out Murphy and let him reprise the moves that earned the first Cop $350 million and status as the top-grossing comedy in film history. [20 May 1987, p.D1]

She's Out of My League essentially plays its central premise straight, although the film does find time to veer into gross-out humor.

The movie is all surface and trades on fortune-cookie wisdom.

Forget all that accuracy business and just enjoy the movie for what it is: a large-scale, passably engrossing tale of valiant knights doing valiant deeds.

There is certainly nothing wrong with this; very young children, and the less discriminating among their elders, are likely to find The Care Bears Movie charming. [08 Apr 1985, p.C4]

It might have all seemed hip and edgy 10 years ago, but today, it just feels tired.

In the end Secret Window asks too much, demands allegiance when only incredulity can be mustered.

That's what happens when film noir goes bad -- and this is a failed noir, so packed with double-crosses and red herrings that after an hour or so you just get tired. Who did it? Who cares? Let's just head home and get some rest. We can try to figure it all out tomorrow. [24 Apr 1992, p.G5]

A loud, dumb movie, but its male, car-obsessed audience will probably enjoy it anyway.

A filmmaker like John Sayles ("Sunshine State") who shares Hiaasen's issue-conscious outlook might have framed the lesson a bit more eloquently. But Shriner blows it.

Musical Chairs is about overcoming impossible odds and never giving up and chasing your dreams – all that afterschool-special stuff - but it's also charming and upbeat, and it's stuffed with great, vibrant, insanely catchy music. No Bee Gees, though.

Despite what you might fear, the movie is not torture. And even if it doesn’t inspire lust, you will breathe a warm sigh of relief, thinking: This could have been so much worse.

Only the quips aren't funny. Not much about the script is amusing at all. Worse, the director, Herbert Ross, who once had a reputation for grace, has been growing clumsier for years and now seems to have lost his timing. [14 Sept 1993, p.E6]

At heart, The Ghost and the Darkness is essentially Jaws with paws -- at one point, you can see the lions' silhouettes circling under a sea of roiling dry grass. It has all the requisite elements for a sweeping, old-fashioned jungle adventure -- except the adventure. [11 Oct 1996, p.6G]

This laborious, talky, fleetingly engaging, ultimately silly picture is about as good a movie as anyone was ever going to wring from Dan Brown's inescapable bestseller.

The dullest, clunkiest, big-budget fantasy since Steven Spielberg flattened Peter Pan in "Hook."

It's all rote, sleep-inducing formula, but it might have still worked if the movie weren't so timid and unimaginative.

There's a mean little Hollywood satire squirreled away within Hollywood Ending, but you have to look hard to find it.

Where "Seven" seemed to radiate diabolical evil, Saw just radiates idiocy.

A film based on this information is potentially interesting, but Conspiracy of Silence, set in modern-day Ireland, is incoherent and often hard to follow.

Unimaginative, exasperating film, hopefully but fruitlessly recycled after the success of 2002's ebullient Whale Rider.

Project X is an astounding, superlative movie about adolescence - a brutal, unapologetic comedy about the fantasy every high school kid carries around in his head about being popular and cool and beloved.

Sober, this kind of material is an acquired taste at best and downright unbearable in stretches. And yet, the movie has the makings of an instant cult classic, sure to grow funnier among its devoted fans with each successive viewing.

Listening to people bicker for almost two hours wears thin, especially when the comedy is never quite so funny as you had hoped it would be.

Alas, as much as it aspires to mimic the charm of old Cary Grant pictures, Touch of Pink is hardly worthy of comparison to even the least of Grant's films.

Too bad, though, that whenever the characters stand still to talk, Knight and Day induces stupor in the viewer.

Allegedly it's based on a true story, which is believable only because the outcome is so unsatisfying it carries the dull metallic tang of real-life ambiguity. And that's neither scary nor stimulating.

View it as a fat-free but tasty cinematic treat in the middle of the long, hot summer.

Once in a while, A Good Man in Africa hits that elusive sweet spot between serious drama and lighthearted comedy, serving at once as a satire of political corruption, a drama about personal integrity and a comedy about carnal lust and culture clash. Most of the film, though, is a mishmash of conflicting tones, veering from one emotional extreme to another so clumsily, it's impossible to keep up. [09 Sep 1994, p.G5]

Misses out on just about everything that made the original work, most notably Falk and Arkin, whose odd-couple pairing was the foundation on which the entire movie rested.

The result: Rather than being funky, Jetsons: The Movie is plain fluffy. [6 July 1990, p.G5]

Though directed by Guy Hamilton, who has made four Bond films, Remo Williams is lackluster of pace and quite clumsy in the telling. And though no one demands devotion to verisimilitude in this kind of thing, a plot this ridden with holes is not an auspicious beginning. It seems unlikely that an audience that already has Rocky and Rambo needs a Remo. [11 Oct 1985, p.D1]

The Mighty Ducks is an upbeat, quick-paced family movie. [06 Oct 1992, p.C5]

It's whenever the music stops that the movie runs into trouble.

It's even better as a love story that just happens to make you laugh.

Weird Science is a nerd-reform film, down to its dewy finale in which all concerned have learned a Lesson About Life. But it's almost always fun. At its best, it's more proof that Hughes is one of American movies' unusual talents. He's an original. [2 Aug 1985, p.C1]

A film that has too little to entertain grownups, and perhaps too much for children. It's a blunder. [21 Dec 1983, p.C8]

The movie moves at a relentless clip, and the characters react intelligently enough to their situation to make it crackling good entertainment -- with bite. [15 Oct 1993, p.G5]

If only director Shawn Levy and the screenwriters had gone for cute and interesting instead of dull and cloyingly sentimental.

The movie earns its R-rating with some graphic (and hilarious) sex scenes and a torrent of four-letter words, but this is a much more sophisticated enterprise than a mere gross-out comedy.

The story is stale, action uninspired, pacing lackadaisical. The whole production looks a little cut-rate, too.

The film does provide some nice shots of Venice and offers one solid reason to display a little patriotic fervor: We do have the freedom to avoid such rote, shallow dullness.

It's pleasant, mildly uplifting entertainment, one of the few recent movies to use plants as its muse.

The girls who adore the likable Everygirl Bynes will find a lot to enjoy about the film, especially the boys who look as though they just were lounging around the Abercrombie & Fitch catalog.

For a while, director Joe Dante spins some daft gags off the situation, and Hanks and Fisher deliver their droller lines with a deadpan sincerity that produces genuine unease. But it turns out that there isn't really much of a script here, and soon The 'Burbs has devolved into a slow build to the big anti-climax. [17 Feb 1989, p.10]

This is, in other words, an adventure film for the 6-to-12 set, a movie for the void left by Disney's forays into the elusive teen market. All but the most easily frightened children should enjoy it; all but the most easily diverted adults are likely to find it tedious. [01 Aug 1983, p.C6]

This is easily Bay’s best movie, the work of a filmmaker with a cracked sense of humor that he is able to share with the audience.

The Little Rascals is nowhere near as annoying as it could have been -- you will actually catch yourself laughing in spots -- and the tykes will love it. [05 Aug 1994, p.G5]

Straw Dogs is an artful provocation - a meditation on masculinity and societal mores in the guise of an explosive thriller.

After it's over, one thing is perfectly clear. Joe Versus the Volcano, for all its wacky gags, delightfully bizarre look and ill-fated attempts at insight, is only one thing: Mediocre. [9 Mar 1990, p.5]

The idea that there is evil under the sun and amongst the verities out there in the clean-living heartland is not exactly new to fiction. Neither is the one about the bad seeds, the homicidal children. In combination, however -- the combination in Children of the Corn-- the elements have a perverse novelty. [19 Mar 1984, p.C6]

Inadvertently does with the civil rights movement exactly what Banderas set out not to do: trivializes it.

The plot and characters are simultaneously far-fetched and cliched, the dialogue has that jocular, slightly slower than sitcom ring, and the ending is a righteously cheesy letdown.

There's a terrible beauty to the work of Larry Clark, the controversial photographer turned filmmaker, that transcends chic nihilism.

Plays out as little more than a diversion, one that does not truly break any new ground. But it's undeniably interesting and leaves plenty of room for a more thoughtful film about women and education.

It resonates with gleaming ferocity as it unspools a story of regret, longing and resolution in two generations of women.

A crackling crime drama assembled from a scrap heap of hoary cliches, Takers proves that everything old can sometimes really be new again.

What makes Whatever Works so enjoyable, aside from the unusually high number of effective one-liners the script contains (this is Allen's funniest movie since Mighty Aphrodite), are its supporting characters.

Like an early Woody Allen film or a classic Marx brothers feature, more of Hoodwinked's gags flop than hit, but they come at such a steady rate, you hardly notice.

Everything about this excruciatingly dull, talky film screams made-for-network-TV: The I'm-only-here-for-a-paycheck performances by famous actors; the Crate and Barrel catalog mise-en-scene; the syrupy, heartwarming score that lays the pathos on so thickly you gag on it.

In the thriller Into the Blue, the Bahamian waters dazzle the eye. They are breathtaking and welcoming, possessing mysterious depths. The same cannot be said for the film's stars, Paul Walker and Jessica Alba, who are every bit as gorgeous as the scenery but not quite so profound.

A hostage drama without any tension. It is a love story without any heat. It is as curiously empty a movie as we've seen all year.

Impossible to watch passively. It may be a work of pure fiction, with the requisite preposterous plot turns, but it still has the air of a ''what if?'' scenario, and it is perfectly, thoroughly chilling.

Mostly honest in its portrayal of teen sexuality -- it exists, whether we like it or not -- but also offers up the troubling notion of teen pregnancy as romantic and magical.

Junk, but amusing junk. [17 Mar 1987, p.B5]

The presence of Culkin in the cast should not deceive parents: This isn't a kids' movie. It's just not much of a grownups' movie, either. [24 Sep 1993, p.G5]

There's no question The Invasion works in a mechanical, by-the-numbers manner. But it's what the movie leaves you with -- absolutely nothing -- that is the scariest thing about it.

The script is so pre-determined it seems generated by a computer program, not human beings.

Even within the context of the superhero universe, the Silver Surfer initially makes for -- let's face it -- a somewhat silly-looking creation.

Part 1 does something that no other previous Twilight movie had achieved: This one draws you close and keeps you there.

Unlike this summer's compulsively watchable "Hustle & Flow," Get Rich or Die Tryin' captures none of the thrill of finding your voice, recording a demo or landing a concert.

Although a happy ending is preordained, at least Joe Forte's script takes the less-obvious route there.

A flavorless brew of Rocky, The Bad News Bears and every bachelor- guardian picture in the history of the medium. [20 July 1982, p.C5]

The kind of movie that rockets so far beyond the line of credibility and so deeply into the realm of utter stupidity, you start to wonder if the filmmakers aren't putting you on.

A devastating lack of romantic connection between its two stars. Lopez had more chemistry with "Enough" co-star Billy Campbell, and for most of that film they were beating the hell out of each other.

Makes for a compelling comedy-drama about family ties. It's only when the cancer takes center stage that the movie feels like a wash.

The movie is a little long for kids.

The performances are shaky, rendering Latter Days as a movie that you've seen before, and done better, too.

Unlike “Amélie,” Love Me If You Dare will not become a sleeper. But neither will it make you go to sleep.

A poignant film punctuated with clumsy moments and a resolution that occurs far too abruptly.

Valiant enlists a squad of loveable birdbrains to turn the classic fighter-pilot formula into an upbeat adventure film loaded with laughs.

It's a redundant comedy, like hearing the same tired joke for the 100th time.

Even the most forgiving moviegoer will recognize this movie as the blatant cash-grab that it is.

Despite all the freaky business on display - and there are moments here when you cannot believe your eyes - The Paperboy suffocates you with boredom like a hot, wet blanket. You want to push it away and escape. It makes sleaze boring.

But most of Sniper is a bore. The details of their assignment are never spelled out, the middle of the film sags, and, in any case, it's hard to work up much enthusiasm for these snipers, heroic though their mission may be. In the movies, heroes must be larger than life: There's just not much excitement watching two guys hide in a bush, waiting for a clear shot. [3 Feb 1993, p.3]

A sporadically funny, always predictable, weirdly downbeat fantasy.

For all its pretension and artiness, Blindness is more like M. Night Shyamalan's "The Happening" (which at least had the decency to be fast-paced and short), right down to its upbeat and inane conclusion.

Despite its title, Shekhar Kapur's new film resembles tarnished copper, its dull focus more appropriate for an episode of “One Tree Hill” than a biopic of one of Britain's greatest monarchs.

It's lifted from pretty much every movie or TV show you've ever seen about police corruption, only not done as well.

A romantic comedy so rote, dull and predictable that it makes "You've Got Mail" seem innovative and fresh.

Detention has a frenetic visual style that's fun and appealing in a lot of ways, but there are way too many elements fighting for attention.