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.