The new Steven Seagal film is, of course, almost unbelievably stupid and vile, but there's something else going on as well this time. Something new. Something . . . tedious. [16 Apr 1991, p.C5]

That final half-hour bears the scars of frenzied re- editing, and it's still overblown -- purple and heaving. And when Hill loses control, he loses it everywhere. Hill, who usually makes half a good movie, might make a good whole one if he ever stuck to a genre and had some fun. But he doesn't do things simply. More often than not, his movies simply do not work. [24 Apr 1987, p.D1]

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.

It's hard to believe there could be so much slack in a film only 96 minutes long. Director Needham blows off the last 25 or so with a race sequence. We're treated to one uninteresting crowd shot after another while a Dixieland band plays Dixie -- all of Dixie -- on the soundtrack. [02 July 1983, p.C5]

The new Total Recall fails on the most basic levels: Its characters are dull, and its action is duller.

The film suffers from a severe lack of urgency and emotional engagement. You can't get involved in a movie in which the characters all seem to be harboring double identities.

Though this sequel is not nearly as violent as Child's Play 2, it's every bit as vulgar and preposterous, funny despite itself and vicious, too. It is, in short, of interest only to those too young to see it. [31 Aug 1991, p.E4]

An overwrought, horribly directed, sloppily plotted and dreadfully written mess. It's difficult to believe that Shanley actually created the thing. [13 Jan 1989, p.C7]

The germ of a better film lies in that joke, but Schaeffer doesn't quite dig it out. Instead, we get painfully unfunny scenes that make us think that when it comes to writing comedy, Schaeffer should stick to his own rule: never again.

The action, which bookends the movie, is atrocious, defying all laws of gravity and physics and machine gun-edited into incomprehensible lunacy.

If Ghost in the Machine isn't the stupidest thriller of the year, it certainly holds the pole position in the race for that honor. The film combines computer hacking, virtual reality and serial murder into a plot so preposterous, so incredibly ridiculous, you keep watching just to see what the filmmakers will dare to do next. [31 Dec 1993, p.G5]

This misguided gangster rap movie had every strike against it from the start.

Doctor Detroit is Dan Aykroyd's first big solo vehicle, and it has some traditional Motown problems: It sputters and wheezes and lurches, never does run smoothly, never does satisfy. In the spirit of products from another troubled industry, this is a raucous comedy that just doesn't have very many jokes. [10 May 1983, p.B5]

Belushi, the only actor to get away with calling Arnold Schwarzenegger Gumby (in Red Heat), wisecracks his way through K-9 -- even in a sappy injured-dog sequence. But despite his efforts, a muddled story has his comic talents on a tight leash. [01 May 1989, p.C5]

Like its eponymous subject, it succeeds only in being shallow and crass and not very much fun to be around.

The timing is off, the gags lame, the twists predictable, the crudity rampant and unamusing.

This is easily one of the silliest, most preposterous thrillers ever made, and the only reason it didn't go straight to video has to be that it stars Pacino.

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]

Parts of House are certainly meant to be funny, and other parts draw laughs the way the tools move, without the apparent intent of their creators. As haunted-house tales go, House is something of a bust. [4 March 1986, p.B5]

This is a disastrously clumsy, heavy-handed movie, one so desperate and exploitative that it resorts to putting a live grenade in the hands of a baby in order to get its message across.

You don't go into a movie called Ninja Assassin expecting a hell of a lot, but this shockingly disjointed and relentlessly dull picture can't even deliver the martial-arts kick its title so plainly promises.

Yes, it's every bit as brainless as the trailers suggest.

I'd have thought you'd get more for $3 million. The dialogue here is among the worst in modern big-budget memory; even the cliches are lame. [20 Mar 1992, p.G5]

Even a film as shabby and humdrum as Beverly Hills Chihuahua, which never musters up the wit and beauty of a single frame of "Lady and the Tramp," is not without its pleasures.

The movie has an undeniable visceral power. It is also a loud, grating wallow in dime-store despair, a cheap and hollow button-puncher.

Watching Adventures in Babysitting is like eating a carton of candy bars. The first bites are sweet, but after a while, you're gagging. This is one gooey confection. [07 July 1987, p.C7]

Tedious and trite.

The biggest problem with Surviving the Game is that, after a rather lengthy and uninteresting buildup, the movie never delivers the action it promises. [19 Apr 1994, p.E2]

War is hell, and so are bad movies about war.

The knock on movies like Wildcats used to be that they belong not on the big screen, but on TV. But times have changed. Wildcats isn't good television, either. It's just Goldie Hawn's latest. [10 March 1986, p.C6]

A wan gloss on a horrific nightmare.

Rich in cliché and brimming with the sort of potent idiocy that can only be found in January-release romantic comedies, Leap Year manages to do every possible thing wrong.

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]

This is ultimately a movie about highly intelligent people in pursuit of trivial nonsense: At least Mulder and Scully caught a real monster every once in a while.

The Hotel New Hampshire, in which John Irving's novel comes to the screen, is such a mess that it does not feel like a film at all. It's a kind of endurance contest, an epic bout with the cutes, in which the audience is made to confront a long, quirky line of performers playing oddball "types," and is then given only a handful of platitudes by which the explain the experience. "Sorrow floats" is the story's most profound statement, though there are others. [3 Apr 1984, p.C5]

Winds up suffocating you with its aura of bogus, store-bought nostalgia.

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 more interested in enlightening than entertaining, and Kidron seems to go out of her way to sap the life out of every scene. It's a horribly directed movie. [08 Sep 1995, p.5G]

The Getaway is more of a carbon copy than a new take on the same story. This new version is a bit bloodier, considerably sexier -- there's one particularly steamy love scene here -- and just as dull and irrelevant as the original. [11 Feb 1994, p.G5]

The Purge isn’t just stupid; it’s also pretentious and often makes no sense.

A thriller boasting Mel Gibson's first starring role in eight years, elicits a gigantic wow -- as in ``Wow, does this movie suck!''

The hyper-stylized violence, for instance, isn't nearly as senseless as the narrative bits in between. And the ''twist'' employs the same sleight-of-hand as "The Usual Suspects."

Gigli's awfulness is of a rarer, more precious variety. It's the sort of bizarre, ill-conceived picture you can't believe exists, but are secretly glad it does.

The better children's movies offer a subtle level of humor to keep the adults entertained while the kiddies enjoy the basic story. [03 Jul 1986, p.D8]

This thoroughly unoriginal splatter flick is littered with references to Hooper's seminal work and lifts the plot directly from its predecessor. [15 Jan 1990, p.C6]

Much like the play within it, Hamlet 2 is lousy. The main difference is that the play is SUPPOSED to be awful. The movie about the play is supposed to be funny.

A stark regression from the intelligence of the Scream franchise, this teen horror sequel is about as satisfying as low-budget food that's been under the heat lamps too long.

A cheesy horror film can offer a vicarious cheap thrill or two. Darkness Falls offers only a test of the patience, not even providing much chance to laugh at the sheer ridiculousness of its villain.

Implausibly, irretrievably boring -- an affront to its undemanding genre. [28 March 1983, p.C6]

It's hard to figure how the combination of director Carl Reiner, comedian John Candy and a movie with the title Summer Rental could come to nothing. [10 Aug 1985, p.D7]

Bloodsport offers some lurid but fascinating bits. Chief among them: Van Damme, his feet tied to two poles, performs horrifyingly painful splits. Otherwise, Bloodsport boasts bad acting, bad photography and a bad script. So much for the art of motion pictures. [03 May 1988, p.C4]

For the first time in the film series, Harris wrote the screenplay himself, which means the movie is practically identical to the book. In other words, they both stink.

The Principal has no principle. It aspires to be a gritty look at a troubled inner-city school, but despite all its tough talk and its seething students, it's a cornball fantasy. [18 Sep 1987, p.D5]

Dumb cliches run amok.

Cage plays his part in exactly the mode of the maimed swain of Moonstruck -- his voice is flat, his jaw slack, his eyes glazed over. He knows it's junk, and he just can't help himself. [26 May 1990, p.E1]

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.

Cox's morose performance could not be less interesting, Harrison's visual stylings all feel borrowed from David Fincher movies and nine inch nails music videos, and the film's elliptical mysteries, which twist onto themselves a la Mulholland Drive, aren't interesting enough to ponder.

The lack of effort, right down to the unimaginative title, is dispiriting.

Neeson is always compelling, even in a movie as ridiculous as The Grey.

A grand, eye-popping film, a beautifully photographed epic with the depth of a Bugs Bunny Cartoon.

Exhausts you with its derivative stupidity, leaving you weak and bored and weary of comedy that's not funny, action that's not exciting, dialogue that's not clever. It's not even an adequate rip-off of the TV show.

My Chauffeur has moments of pure daffiness, unhinged stuff. But it is also the most ineptly made comedy in years, so badly made that it is ultimately unwatchable. [20 March 1986, p.B6]

Bad enough to make even James Gandolfini and Catherine O'Hara seem dull.

The Conspirator hits a new nadir for Redford: Sitting through this stage-bound, talky, stiffly-acted movie reminded me of having to endure the Hall of Presidents attraction at Walt Disney World (one of the few existing bits of proof that Disney had a dark and evil side).

If you're going to direct a piece of crass, nonsensical junk, at least have the decency to release it straight to video, where it belongs.

Shrill and sloppy film.

If watching people having their faces cut off, getting their legs amputated and having their throats tenderly slit is your idea of a horrific good time, you'll certainly get your money's worth here.

Most of this is tedious instead of unintentionally amusing.

Time to give the shoot-’em-up thing a rest, guys: It’s tired and played out, and so are you.

It'll have you wishing the villain was just another maniac with a machete or a chain saw. [30 Jan 1989, p.C6]

There isn't a moment in the entire picture in which you will recognize an element of your own life.

Don't waste your money.

But the blame for the stultifying Mooseport lies squarely on the shoulders of the screenwriters and anyone else who assumed the limited Romano could carry such a dated, lousy film. The results are in: He can't do it, at least not without a lot more help.

According to legend, a silver bullet can kill a werewolf. Too bad it can't slay bad writing, without which the ill-conceived Red Riding Hood would not exist.

You’re Next is built on such an enormous pile of guff, it’s practically insulting.

The entire movie bears the whiff of a vanity project — a modestly budgeted bone Universal Pictures threw at Diesel so he would keep starring in Fast and Furious pictures. Those movies are bank; Riddick is rank.

Hitchcock spends too much time off the set of Psycho, where the real story was, and focuses instead on incidental matters that feel like outtakes. Mother would not have been pleased.

The film will probably play a lot better in dorm rooms with plenty of beer kegs and bongs on hand, but in the confines of a movie theater, it's deadly - the sort of bad comedy Mel Brooks made late in his career, until he finally smartened up and quit.

With their flair for wretched excess, Damiani and screenwriter Tommy Lee Wallace make it hard to bear Amityville II in good humor. [28 Sep 1982, p.D6]

Though My Tutor contains many scenes meant to provide comic relief, there is only one that works: Hired to deflower Bobby in the early going, the local drive-in slattern is caught flagrante delicto in a well-used backseat by her fiancee, the leader of a motorcycle gang. "He hates it when I do this," she says to Bobby, and one wants to love this movie...Otherwise, alas, My Tutor is witless. It seems to take forever for Bobby to learn to conjugate, and he's pretty slow at French, too. As for the double standard, note that simple role reversal -- older man deflowering teenage girl -- produces not a softcore sex comedy, but a crime drama. And that's a different genre altogether. [23 May 1983, p.6]

It takes a concerted effort to make a movie as relentlessly stupid and grating as 15 Minutes.

This tale of teenage witches run amok is silly, juvenile stuff, and it doesn't even have the decency to stick to its own ridiculous logic. [03 May 1996, p.6G]

When The Guardian isn't goofy, it's as dull as plywood and just as thin. [01 May 1990, p.C4]

There isn't a single scene in this story about a traveler from another planet (Jim Caviezel) who crash-lands on Earth during the Iron Age that doesn't remind you of another, better movie.

The sequel is a shameless exercise in creative pilfering. Expect the same gags (more VCR-programming tips on horseback) and annoying catch phrases (Crystal's nasal "Hellloooooo") as in the original Western spoof. [10 June 1994, p.G5]

I found it to be extremely annoying, childish and simple-minded. [24 May 1991, p.G11]

No atmosphere, no tension -- nothing but Costner, flailing away. It's a buggy drag.

The less said about Simpson's performance the better. From the neck down she fulfills all the requirements, but, honestly, I think General Lee might do a better job with the dialogue.

There is so much that is wrong with The Alamo that it is easier to begin with what the movie gets right: Davy Crockett. As played by Billy Bob Thornton.

Not that the film is so horrendously offensive -- it's almost, and I hesitate to say this, too stupid to provoke insult -- but it's juvenile enough to suck a few IQ points out of any audience member with a brain cell.

Somebody at 20th Century-Fox should have had the decency to deep-six The Pirate Movie. It stinks, but it's first. The Pirate Movie's sole accomplishment is making it to the screen before Universal's The Pirates of Penzance, thus poisoning the well for the real thing. [7 Aug 1982, p.C4]

An insipid comedy in which the women are shallow, acquisitive, backstabbing, selfish harridans.

Witless, unoriginal mishmash of gangsta-drama clichés.

Getaway makes the Transformers movies seem like they were shot in slow motion. You see all these vehicles smashing into each other, but the movie is never thrilling.

Oscar, the new Stallone vehicle, is dreadful for an hour or so, then merely bad. By the time it's bearable, the picture is almost over. And by the time it's over, no regrets. [26 Apr 1991, p.G5]

Electric Dreams seems to take forever to establish its premise and its characters, who (computer excepted) are nonetheless rather one-dimensional. [23 Jul 1984, p.C6]

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

The film is even slower and less engaging than is standard for its undistinguished genre. [22 Nov 1983, p.B5]