Man on a Ledge just made me think of an old Van Halen song: Jump.

A Middle Ages "Rocky" that spares no cliche in its unduly long, 2 1/4 hours.

Aggressively, defiantly stupid.

This odious, hypocritical movie marks director David Gordon Green's graduation into full-on hack.

The whole incoherent mess is sort of like a downbeat Gap ad, only longer and a lot more boring.

The idea, I suppose, is that love connects us all, even when it goes wrong. Fortunately, even love doesn't usually go quite so badly as this movie does.

Sommersby simply lacks momentum and sense. [05 Feb 1993, p.G5]

The sole mystery is the apparent collapse of Carpenter's skills as a storyteller. Prince of Darkness is shapeless and almost utterly lacking in rhythm, as if it had been slashed and then badly reassembled, like a Carpenter victim. [28 Oct 1987, p.D8]

I could tell you what Double Team is about, but life is short. Instead, I'll tell you that Van Damme and Rodman play the good guys, and that they trade lines like "You're crazier than my hairstylist!" and "You look like a carrot with earrings!" [5 Apr 1997, p.1G]

An irritatingly contrived drama.

It's never a good sign when a movie's credits include: ''Tony Orlando as himself.'' But the crooner is the highlight of the dreadful Waking Up in Reno.

First Blood is no more than a man-bites-town retread, in which Vietnam and its aftermath are merely the angle. [27 Oct 1982, p.B6]

Only genuinely talented people can make pictures this bad and misguided. “This whole thing is unacceptable,” Lil remarks at one point. That goes for the movie, too.

Downright awful.

Silly, overplotted conspiracy thriller.

Sitting through Action Jackson was like being dragged through a swamp of sick humor and nauseating violence. I needed a shower afterward. [18 Feb 1988, p.C4]

In most respects Police Academy 2 is witless, which complaint is admittedly akin to inspecting a Hefty bag and being dismayed to find trash. [03 Apr 1985, p.D7]

The movie even fails on a psychological level, never illustrating how, in a pressure-cooker environment and swept up by mob-think mentality, we are capable of committing acts that innately repel us.

The film adaptation of Pink Floyd's chart-topping album The Wall has all the humor and charm of a brain tumor. [21 Sept 1982, p.B4]

Not only does the fragmented delivery become trying, but also the behind-the-camera dialogue and city shots with heavy Parisian traffic numb the senses. And as beautiful as it looks, there's really nothing new coming out of the lens of the revered Godard.

When Escape From L.A. isn't being ridiculous, it's merely dumb. It's no fun at all. [09 Aug 1996, p.6G]

Director Stuart Blumberg’s movie, which features a surprisingly starry cast, comes off as superficial and trite.

For all its noble intentions, the movie is really a work of crass exploitation -- an obvious and manipulative grab to cash in on the post-9/11 hero worship of the firefighting profession.

Arnold Schwarzenegger's latest, The Running Man, is a septic tank of a movie. This atrocious futuristic drama forms a dumping ground for bad acting, derivative writing and stomach-churning violence. The movie stinks. [13 Nov 1987, p.D1]

Every character is quirky, and each has a schtick.

After he reveals what is ultimately a paper-thin murder scheme, LaLoggia develops suspense, but like the rest of the thrills in Lady in White, it is fleeting. [27 Jun 1988, p.D6]

Think for a moment about a film that depends for much of its appeal upon a romance between Michael J. Fox and Helen Slater. No, not as May-December or even July-August, but June-June, as in peers in love. It's Smurf-meets-girl -- not just a mismatch, but a confusion of species. [10 Apr 1987, p.D1]

The movie's only value is in unwittingly defining more clearly how played out the whole transgressing-boundaries-as-art thing has become.

Pryor is so lacking in energy that Wilder steals most of the movie from him. For the first time in his career, Wilder actually seems robust, but it's only because he's performing opposite a ghost. It's quite sad. [12 May 1989, p.DW5]

Part of the problem is that Garner, so irresistible on television and in last year's "13 Going on 30," just can't pull off the cold-hearted killer routine.

Like its predecessors, Tokyo Drift suffers from a terminal lack of levity.

It’s bad enough to make you look askance at Salma Hayek, Maria Bello, and Maya Rudolph, all of whom deserve a chance to do something funny other than pose as wives exuding various degrees of sexiness.

He's (Sandler) trying to clone himself by supporting his buddies in making low-budget, high-grossing -- in all senses of the word -- formula films just like his own.

Feels like it's been pasted together from 51 other movies -- none of them good.

The movie is pure product, and proud of it: There isn't a single surprising moment in all of its 88 minutes, because Domestic Disturbance is designed to stick to tried-and-true formulas, instead of shaking them up a little.

Tomb is the kind of movie you sit through dreading the expository scenes, because the acting is so bad and the dialogue so pointedly written to make sure the little ones in the audience can keep up with the plot.

This is pure Disaster 101 formula, although distilled to the minimum amount of dialogue and characters possible.

A feather-light musical rushed into production to capitalize on American Idol-frenzy, is nothing more than an excuse to give the two leads several musical numbers, a la those Frankie Avalon-Annette Funicello "Beach Blanket Bingo" movies, and with just about the same amount of substance, too.

It's not quite true to say that death is preferable to sitting through Over HerDead Body, but it's a safe bet that if you struggle through this witless romantic comedy the lure of being six feet under will cross your mind.

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]

Strange as it sounds, the failure of this tawdry little odyssey into mammalia is that it doesn't make any sense. The smallest effort by writer, director or producer could have meant a movie with laughs as well as the capacity to anesthetize adults. [02 Aug 1983, p.C5]

From this, we can safely assume that Schaeffer is a nag and a pest, though after two films we still have little proof that he's a capable director. [8 March 1996, p.7G]

The Last American Virgin has been advertised with the tagline, "See it or be it." In this connection, maybe "the new celibacy" we keep reading about isn't such a bad idea. [14 Sept 1982, p.B4]

Such a dull, clunky, joyless mess, it's hard to believe the people who made it understand much about movies.

Much of King Kong Lives in fact seems designed by and for invertebrates. It is well known that if you leave a monkey in a room with a typewriter for long enough, the monkey will write an intelligible story. With screenwriters, on the other hand, there's no guarantee. [22 Dec 1986, p.C5]

The few bright spots in Oxford Blues, including the handsome cinematography, are like the raisins in the tapioca: They just don't help. [24 Aug 1984, p.C10]

An inept comedy.

In Chopping Mall the conflict is merely an excuse for a repeat of the kids vs. slasher formula. Nothing heavy here, just the predictable deaths of the couples who went "all the way," the survival of the virgins, and the best exploding head sequence since Deadly Friend. [05 Nov 1986, p.D6]

A movie as annoying as its oddly punctuated title, After.Life is a misguided and empty-headed attempt at psychological horror that succeeds only at talking the viewer to death.

This is a problem for a story located deep underwater, because without an immediate, photogenic threat, the movie literally has nowhere to go. The hard-working cast, led by Greg Evigan, Miguel Ferrer and the psychedelically named Taurean Blacque, lurches from bulkhead to air lock on cue, but accomplishes little beyond contributing to a growing sense of claustrophobia. [16 Jan 1989, p.7]

Stealth is basically the kind of movie a 13-year-old boy given an infinite budget and creative freedom might cook up between Xbox games.

Nothing but Trouble used to be called Valkenvania, which gives you an idea of the filmmakers' instincts: From the obscure they moved to the generic. The movie is something of both, and not much fun on either count. [19 Feb 1991, p.C8]

Senseless. [15 Sept 1989, p.33]

Loud, sophomoric and stunningly crude.

But the movie itself, despite a pretty funny scene early on in which Mitchell, a dyed-in-the-wool California surfer, tries to ingratiate himself to a class full of urban Cincinnati kids, is dull and conventional. Nice stunts, though. [21 Sept 1993, p.E6]

The movie, touted as a modern Little Women, shows none of the feminist spirit or evergreen qualities of that film. Even in those cumbersome bonnets, the March clan seemed much more hip and self-assured. In comparison, The Baby-sitters Club feels like fodder for a new generation of Stepford wives. [18 Aug 1995, p.7G]

We're subjected to 80 minutes of butt- kicking -- most of it contrived and flatly staged -- in Speakman's embarrassing debut, The Perfect Weapon. [19 Mar 1991, p.C5]

The entire story -- has been done before, and should have been limited to a 30-minute Saturday morning cartoon episode.

Like most Norris vehicles, The Delta Force is long on spurious action and short on production values. It's also silly, but it's more than that. Rambo asked, "Do we get to win this time?"; Norris' Delta Force gets to go back and win last time. [19 Feb 1986, p.D8]

John Derek, who wrote and directed and filmed Bolero, failed to make Bo look sexy; managed, in fact, to make her look dull and foolish. [01 Sep 1984, p.B5]

She's Out of Control is too insipid to take. [15 Apr 1989, p.E5]

How can a movie as overstuffed with funny people as The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard be so listless and leaden?

A movie of marginal ambition and multiple cute young faces.

Man bites dog in Turner & Hooch, the new Tom Hanks vehicle, and it's a tender moment. But there's precious little else going on in this tired little action comedy, which is so bereft of ideas that it winds up borrowing from Lady and the Tramp, among other familiar sources. [28 July 1989, p.G5]

The plot is rather basic when you remove the clutter. Boy gets busted, needs girl to save his soul. It's all stiff and forced. So are the performances. [10 Oct 1987, p.B6]

This is the kind of colossally misguided vanity project.

Bad enough to earn a rare spot on my hallowed list of ''The Worst Movies I've Ever Seen,'' An American Carol is testament that the country's culture wars are raging just as strongly within Hollywood as anywhere else.

A hellishly bad film. [8 Feb 1985, p.9]

Among the mysteries of Hollywood life is the terribleness of Jaws sequels; they are the very worst of a bad lot. Now comes No. 4 -- Jaws the Revenge -- and it is as wretched as it is ungrammatical. [17 July 1987, p.1D]

A sluggish, soporific dud, the dreariest big-budget science-fiction adventure since "Dune."

The whole thing's grotesque as a gargoyle and ugly as sin.

A lot like getting socks for Christmas: Better than finding coal in your stocking but not exactly as thrilling as unwrapping a big-screen HDTV.

Smokey aims very low and still doesn't hit. [17 Aug 1983, p.D4]

The Mangler is one of the worst movies we've seen in years, and we've seen a lot of movies. [6 Mar 1995, p.5C]

Movies like The Wild Life are softcore porn comics for teenyboppers. It's hard to believe teenagers are really as easily entertained as the makers of this movie seem to expect them to be. What ever happened to introspection and identity crises? [01 Oct 1984, p.C7]

Oh, yes. Reynolds is in it -- but whatever quiet comic timing he once had with DeLuise in movies like The End has been shot to hell by the confusion in the script and the havoc in the pace. They get it back again during the credits, which are accompanied by some outtakes of DeLuise and Reynolds doing their improvisational bit as DeLuise assumes the role of a human bomb. Even bad bloopers are better than this movie. [29 June 1984, p.7]

A shockingly, unbelievably bad movie.

I can honestly think of no reason why anyone would want to see Testosterone apart from the rumor that the film contains a full-frontal shot of Antonio Sabato Jr. naked.

Plentiful helpings of dreadful acting, confusing action cinematography, choppy editing and embarrassing dialogue, with the added bonus of a plot almost as dumb as that of the original film.

The Dungeonmaster is a low-budget fantasy from 1984 on which no less than seven directors labored, and in vain. Each of the seven took one "sequence" in a series of ill-explained jousts between a computer wizard and a caped character called Mestema, who turns out to be Satan himself. Each of the "sequences" is uniformly shoddy looking. [14 Aug 1985, p.D5]

There are plenty of good B movies around to amuse fans of the medieval-hocum genre, but Sword of the Valiant rates a D- minus. [03 Dec 1984, p.C8]

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.

There's a delightfully promising premise behind Halloween III -- something's wrong with the kids' masks -- but somehow Wallace gets sidetracked, and the movie wanders away. [30 Oct 1982, p.D5]

B-movie king Charles Bronson, whose long association with Cannon Films has set all-time lows in the idiotic, hits rock bottom in Kinjite: Forbidden Subjects. [03 Feb 1989, p.C5]

It's hard to dislike Cheech and Chong, even now, in the wake of the most tedious 90 minutes of "feature" film in 1983. "The boys" have been at work on their curious subgenre -- drug references and large breasts in ceaseless combination -- for far too long now, and you can tell, watching them sleepwalk through the material, that they're tired. [10 May 1983, p.B5]

Lorin Dreyfuss (Richard's brother) and David Landsberg try acting in a movie they wrote for producers Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus. They fail on every count...Yawn city, bambino. [21 Aug 1986, p.D5]

Much of the big-surf footage is stunning; some of it is terrifying. But is it worth sitting through North Shore to get to the big sets? No way, dude. [14 Aug 1987, p.D5]

Putting this hackneyed villain in The Big Apple is a tantalizing concept, but Hedden rarely takes advantage of it. He deserves credit for a few shocks and some laughs from a gloom- and-doom deck swabber, but this is highly derivative stuff. And like many slash directors, he replaces suspense with short chases and violence. If audience response is a meter, Jason VIII is a dud. Save a few shrieks, the crowd fell victim to boredom. [31 July 1989, p.C5]

Monumentally silly thriller.

Has he forgotten how to act? He can't deliver lines, he has no comic timing, he moves like a crippled buffalo -- Eastwood is so awful in this unfunny action comedy that those obnoxious movies with Clyde the orangutan now seem like Shakespeare. [29 May 1989, p.C1]

No matter how well-choreographed, Kosugi's karate scenes are impossible to look at as abstract movement divorced from their casually murderous purpose. What is more, they are distorted by special effects and physical feats made possible only by trick photography. [21 Sep 1984, p.D14]

There's a crude energy to the opening scenes of this film, suggesting that the director might one day find a trade. The rest of it is the worst kind of trash, being not just vicious but stupid, too. Peter Fonda appears in an expanded walk-on as a pimp, his "special appearance." Fonda, O'Neal, Cara and the aforementioned Blakley; it is a long fall indeed. [6 March 1985, p.5]

When the film isn't borrowing, it's collapsing of its own weight, slight though it may be. [28 Jul 1996, p.B4]

Hot to Trot is such a poorly executed comedy it boggles the mind. Even a horse's mind. [31 Aug 1988, p.D3]

A sad and rote exercise in milking a played-out idea -- a straight guy has to dress up in drag -- that shockingly manages to be even worse than its title would imply.

Film students may enjoy watching Candy Mountain for the continuity goofs -- snow that vanishes and reappears between shots, a guitarist who either is or isn't playing, depending on whether you believe your eyes or your ears. But music fans drawn by the names on the marquee would do better to spend their money on an album.[26 Aug 1988, p.C5]

Who's That Girl's writers botched the creation of their confection. A successful screwball comedy is like a souffle. This is a souffle made of concrete. [07 Aug 1987, p.D1]

The most astounding thing about this abysmal comedy -- aside from the fact the studio actually allowed critics within a mile of it -- is that it's so ghastly it is beneath even the meager dignity of Paris Hilton.