Even the story-within-a-story structure doesn't pay off. This material needed more substance and ideas - and less flash and sumptuous production values.

A stiff, unconvincing epic.

Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome is a rip-off of punk style. It pretends to be about life after we destroy the world -- or about the despair and degeneracy in the world as we know it now. In fact, it's mostly one big fashion show. Science-fiction flicks about contrasting good and bad societies have been done for a long time and done better. If you're 14 and angry, dig it. Otherwise, stay far away. [10 July 1985, p.D6]

Mann deserves credit for trying new stuff, of course; The Keep is nothing if not ambitious. But it isn't anything more, either. [20 Dec 1983, p.D5]

A Jerry Bruckheimer production, which gives the movie a disquieting sense of stupidity.

Born American was made in Finland, a first feature by two Finnish directors. Their government reportedly stopped financing the project in mid-production and eventually disowned it. The guess here is that the reason for this was not so much fear of offending the Great Red Neighbor as it was simple embarrassment. [01 Sep 1986, p.D5]

Combined with the sluggish story line, Daylight becomes a chore to sit through: The only people who want to get out of the tunnel more desperately than the characters in the movie are the ones stuck in the theater. [6 Dec 1996, p.5G]

Gives romance a bad name.

PG? Please. Might as well take a kid to Hannibal. At least that one was funnier and didn't implicate any noble breeds in its violence -- just humans.

Laughable, contrived banality. You won't believe a second of it. [17 Sept 1996, p.25G]

With Kaboom, Araki takes a huge step backward from the maturity and restraint he demonstrated in 2004's "Mysterious Skin," his best and most-assured film to date.

There are several cameos in For a Good Time, Call… by famous actors portraying the girls' phone-sex clients, including Kevin Smith and Seth Rogen, but they've been clearly been left to improvise, and they don't put much effort into their routines.

Taxes the patience of even the most willing viewer with its sheer nonsense: It's distractingly illogical.

A star rises in the east. A savior is born. Two thousand years later, a surprisingly dull film is made.

As expected, Kevin Costner is witty and personable in Revenge. The movie isn't nearly as charming. It overstays its welcome with a story that's not gripping enough to fill half its two-hour running time. [21 Feb 1990, p.D4]

Just My Luck is way too long for such a slight premise, and Lohan, so appealing in Mean Girls, is years too young for the part.

Compared to other summer blockbusters, Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie is as cheesy as the TV show. The computer animations are second-rate, the sets are theme-park attraction quality. [30 June 1995, p.6G]

The Haunting is ultimately another example of Hollywood at its most bloated and misguided [23 July 1999, p.9G]

It does contain some curiously overwrought dialogue. People say "Go for it!" a lot, but then Louden will observe, with the bright eyes of a man on the edge of a modest revelation: "The nice thing about working out all the time is that you have a lot of nocturnal emissions." Don't laugh; this line actually stirs something deep inside the heroine, and Carla's eyes, like the sensibilities of an entire audience out in the seats, go suddenly, irretrievably soft. [16 Feb 1985, p.C7]

Just plain bad. Really, really bad.

Patronizing, dull and offensive, this drama about a knight in shining white skin out to serve justice in the name of po' black folk is Hollywood at its sanctimonious, bleeding-heart worst: A movie made by people who are sitting so high up on their hills, they long ago stopped realizing they're looking down at the world. [03 Jan 1997, p.5G]

Chained Heat is your basic visit to the snakepit, with a few twists. One is the presence of Linda Blair, as the innocent (she's in for vehicular homicide, "an accident," which makes her cell-hardened fellow inmates snicker with anticipation). Another is that rarely in the history of either movies or the penal system have prison officials and guards been seen to be quite this despicable. [30 May 1983, p.D5]

A spectacularly mediocre movie.

All of this, of course, has been done before and much better. Heartbreak Ridge isn't as interesting a training film as An Officer and a Gentleman nor as exciting as Top Gun. Watching paint dry might be less interesting than sitting through Heartbreak Ridge, but only slightly. [6 Dec 1986, p.D1]

Stoops well below substituting style for substance.

What ultimately sinks The Visit is that Shyamalan, who had previously come up with new and ingenious ways to frighten us, resorts to familiar jump-scare tactics in which things suddenly pop into the frame, accompanied by loud sound effects. There’s no real sense of danger, no menace.

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.

This Must Be the Place is as emotionally zonked-out as its protagonist, and just as difficult to warm up to.

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

Two for the Money, which was written by Dan Gilroy (Freejack, Chasers), is so badly constructed and illogical that its inanities manage to drown the actor (Pacino) out.

Charmless and grating and immediately forgettable.

It's like an afternoon at the quarter slots -- lots of effort, small payoff. [11 Oct 1982, p.B6]

The formulae of gal-next-door and big game are followed so slavishly that it's hard to laugh at Teen Wolf even on the rare moments when it is original. The script and the direction are simply too lazy, too contemptuous even of adolescent audiences. [24 Aug 1985, p.C5]

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.

The characters in Secretary never feel the least bit human. Their quirks, sexual and otherwise, are all on the surface. Inside, where it counts, nobody's home.

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

The kind of schlocky, disposable time-killer that once might have starred Jean-Claude Van Damme, The Impostor is a relentlessly dull chase flick with an inexplicably high-toned cast.

It's not the sort of movie you watch; it's the sort that assaults you.

Cosmatos' constant device of setting up the audience, releasing the tension and then setting up again gives the movie a pacing that is all manipulation. [22 May 1985, p.D1]

The sort of entertainment that makes you happy to be grown up and able to avoid the current onslaught of trite, lazy, unimaginative films aimed at tween-agers.

It's up to O'Donnell to carry the show, and he's simply not up to the task.

Sadly, Jupiter Ascending turns out to be the exact opposite: the worst movie the Wachowskis have ever made.

An unsalvageable wreck.

Nothing in it -- plot, dialogue or character development -- reaches today's standards of filmmaking.

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]

In their defense, it must be said that Dennis Quaid (as the chief dreamer) and Kate Capshaw (back again, this time in the time-honored woman's role of "assistant scientist") make an appealing couple. The presence of Max von Sydow and Christopher Plummer is more problematic; someone paid these people a lot of money to sleepwalk. [16 Aug 1984, p.B6]

The film is never arresting, though it's arrestable -- throw it in the clink and throw away the key. [13 Apr 1990, p.G11]

There is humor in the familiar just waiting to be rehashed for new generations, and A Guy Thing surely isn't the last stupid leave-'em-at-the-altar film we're likely to see.

The combination of slack script and coasting star is invariably lethal, and since Blue City doesn't aim very high to begin with, the disaster is complete. Even the gunfights are staged ineptly, and the picture's one big action sequence is so telegraphed that during a preview showing, when Nelson's character finally tumbled to what was going on and muttered, "It's a setup," the audience hooted happily in derision. [3 May 1986, p.D1]

Abduction is a crass and lowbrow attempt to cash in on a young actor's heat - an exploitation picture where the person being taken advantage of is too young to notice.

The new Fame is practically identical to Alan Parker's 1980 original -- I mean, it's the same damn movie -- except for all the parts with heart and humor and poignancy and soul and fun.

Whatever goodwill Stuart Saves His Family manages to work up disappears by the maudlin, dramatic finale. [14 Apr 1995, p.5G]

British satire loses something when it's handled by Americans: You miss the perspective that a foreign culture brings, so instead of wit and humor, you end up trafficking in self-congratulatory clichés and sentiment.

For most of its running time, Wes Craven's New Nightmare is simply a s-l-o-w- tease to a paradoxical, reality-bending shockfest that never materializes. [14 Oct 1994, p.G9]

Two things are going on in The Razor's Edge, the second movie adaptation of Somerset Maugham's novel. One is that Bill Murray, the comedian, is trying a dramatic role for the first time. Another is that people out in the seats are being bored to tears. [19 Oct 1984, p.D1]

The whole thing is so listless and mechanical, watching it is a curiously dispiriting experience. You start hoping someone whips out a bear suit.

The Legend of Tarzan doles out big beats of action at regular intervals to keep you awake, like a drunkard clashing trashcan lids in an alley late at night. But your eyelids grow heavy anyway.

Timeline gives Gigli serious competition for worst film of the year honors.

A royal mess, a lethally stupid romantic teen comedy.

The script is by Chris Columbus (Home Alone), who also directed, and it's as lazy as it is maudlin. [24 May 1991, p.G13]

Janeane Garofalo is all wrong as the giraffe, whom the animators contort into all manner of weird positions so she can share the frame with pint-size love interest Benny the squirrel (Jim Belushi).

White Men Can't Jump clocks in at just under two hours of court-stomping, in-your-face, anything-goes street basketball. And that's all, folks. [31 Mar 1992, p.E6]

The Edge was written by playwright/filmmaker David Mamet and directed by Lee Tamahori (Once Were Warriors, Mulholland Falls). Both excel at dissecting that complicated beast known as male angst, but both fall flat with this confused misfire that plays as a banal stranded-in-the-wild adventure for grown-ups. [26 Sep 1997, p.4G]

Young girls are the only ones likely to enjoy this vapid road-trip movie.

Cobra looks and sounds as bad as it does because Stallone hired George P. Cosmatos (Rambo), a hack with no ideas, to direct, and because Stallone wrote the screenplay himself. No excuses: This movie is just the way the highest paid and hence most powerful man in Hollywood wanted it. You take a long look at the thing, you keep that in mind: This is the film he meant to make. [24 May 1986, p.D1]

The brothers (Farrelly) produced Say It Isn't So, which bears their stamp in every frame and features all of the elements their movies are known for, except one: laughter.

Raises a few questions -- like just what were they thinking?

Oddly tone deaf.

It is absolutely, inexcusably terrible.

This would all be a lot more fun if Jason were ever in jeopardy, but since we know he can't be killed -- the best one can hope to do is bottle him up and store him, like toxic waste -- the charm of the film depends on action in the margins. Part VI, for instance, had a sense of humor; II and III had a splendid variety of weaponry. No jokes this time, however, and Jason contents himself for the most part with the ax blow, the tent-pole stab and the simple head-twist. He's old, and he has lost a step. [17 May 1988, p.B4]

Inherently laughable, but in all the wrong ways.

Drowns in its own noxious fumes. Who knew being bad could be so dull?

Downright terrible: impossible to enjoy, impossible to believe.

I guess Perfect is a movie about aerobics, journalism, ethics and love and a couple of hunks. It is even more stupid than it sounds. It is the stupidest thing I have seen this year, in or out of the movies. [7 June 1985, p.C9]

Crushingly inept family comedy.

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.

"The silence will kill you!" warn the posters for Silent House. That's only if the boredom doesn't get you first, though.

The lack of imagination in Stargate is distressing. Who would agree to fund such an expensive project based on such a perfunctory and dull script? All the creativity here has been spent on nice costumes and some cool morphing Anubis headgear. The story is so cliched it's laughable. [28 Oct 1994, p.G6]

The search for true love is the backbone of romantic comedy as well as the lifeblood of match.com, but this film's clumsy, completely inauthentic portrayal of it is handled in a shockingly tedious fashion.

The enigma of Reeves, sort of a human black hole on screen, works well in "The Matrix" but it drains the life from weepy romance.

Hamburger, like Police Academy and a dozen others before it, is essentially a basic-training sitcom with some softcore on the side. And like the films it imitates, Hamburger is an example of a perfectly good comic premise -- there's weirdness in modern food technology, bet your syntho-chicken nuggets there is -- botched by a script aimed at just that segment of the audience that is theoretically banned from attending R-rated films. [20 March 1986, p.B6]

It's as stupid, unimaginative and cheesy as the rest of them. [16 Aug 1993, p.C2]

Eye For an Eye is a Charles Bronson revenge flick with Sally Field in the Bronson role: It's Death Wish Gidget , and it's ridiculous. [12 Jan 1996, p.6G]

If the sounds of snapping forearms and ruptured jugular veins make your heart sing, then you won't want to miss Steven Seagal's latest gorefest -- Under Siege 2: Dark Territory. [17 July 1995, p.3C]

It's still quite sexy, but hardly erotic. The director, Zalman King, not only has seen entirely too many in the goofy Emmanuelle series, he appears not to know just how stupid those movies are and so has made little more than a knock-off of them. [4 May 1990, p.13]

Curiously (and contrary to what its ads would have you believe), Aspen Extreme is painfully discreet when it comes to sex. Whenever the characters engage in a romantic liaison, Hasburgh nervously cuts away right after the first kiss. It's as erotic -- or even romantic -- as skinny dipping in ice water. The skiing sequences are the movie's saving grace, exquisitely photographed and thrilling to watch. If you go, try to stick around until the avalanche scene near the end: It's impressive, and it's the only thing you'll remember. [26 Jan 1993, p.E2]

The devices in the script are more obvious than the special effects. [27 Apr 1990, p.G5]

In Celtic Pride, a comedy about sports fanaticism, two obsessive basketball followers want to see the underdog Boston Celtics win the NBA championship so badly that they kidnap the star player from the opposing team to make him miss the deciding game...Instead, they should've kidnapped the screenwriter and made him write a better movie. Celtic Pride is jaw-droppingly bad, a comedy so bereft of anything remotely humorous that you find yourself watching the extras in the background, desperately searching for something resembling entertainment. [19 Apr 1996, p.6G]

Oz the Great and Powerful is an oppressive, bloated bore.

It still stinks...It's just a miss. [21 Dec 1990, p.13]

It is a grand-looking, grandly empty pageant.

Mostly, though, the movie is a hack sitcom romance in which the big question is how long it will take Tom Selleck to confess his love for Nancy Travis, Mary's mom. [21 Nov 1990, p.D1]

The film is probably not evil incarnate, but it's so irritating you wish it -- and just about everyone in it -- would just shut up and get out of your room.

Insulting to anyone with a healthy sense of humor and the simple desire to laugh.

The River Wild is simply a procession of banal, dull situations that add up to nothing. [30 Sep 1994, p.G4]

The jokes? Passing gas, large breasts, schoolyard double entendre -- the usual run of recess humor. On the faces of most of the cast, one can clearly read despair, occasionally even irritation. They know: If you're much over 10, Police Academy 5 isn't going to keep you awake. [23 March 1988, p.C7]

There’s exactly one good scene in all of The Hangover Part III, a hilarious bit of business halfway during the end credits that reminds you what made the original film so good.