Fiery but turgid adaptation of the 1890 August Strindberg play.

May be dumb, but it must be noted that the screenwriters of this slight, silly comedy have borrowed from the best.

A late-summer delight, a sleek, handsomely made bauble buoyed by a cast much stronger than the flimsy material deserves.

Instead of a tense, emotional and psychological thriller or a thoughtful exploration of grief and guilt, what we end up with is ... soap. Whether you choose to wash your hands of it is up to you.

What we are not spared is the sort of trite movie that lacks the backbone of any good dysfunctional-family comedy: a thread of the universal amid the absurdity.

Director Daniel Petrie Jr. does a journeyman job, though he lets the air out of the thing at the end. [26 Apr 1991, p.G5]

You need lots of gifted people chasing after the same bad idea to make a movie as colossally misguided as Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close.

If any of this screams "cheap Generation X marketing ploy," you're right on the money. [31 March 1995, p.5G]

Even the women in Festival in Cannes feel more like sketches than fully realized people -- the aging actress, the naive hopeful, the newly minted starlet -- leaving you nothing but the showbiz satire to chew on.

The film's failure to adhere to one of the most important rules of humor -- never give extensive screen time to someone who is not the slightest bit funny -- prevents it from being a completely enjoyable, if silly, romp.

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.