Does King's tale play a part in the film at all? Kind of; half of it is there, but they've left out the really scary images from the story. The only thing The Lawnmower Man accomplishes is to remind you how boring it is to watch someone else play a video game. If they ever start marketing this virtual reality stuff, however, someone's going to get very rich. [9 Mar 1992, p.C4]

The film is cold, and despite the principals' considerable thrashings, utterly uninvolving. The overarching theme, gunplay notwithstanding, is tedium. [02 Jun 1989, p.5]

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

While there is archival value in permanently recording this work on celluloid, the best way to really enjoy it remains live on stage.

A romantic comedy need not be original to work. It just needs, you know, romance. Something to swoon over. What Two Weeks Notice provides, however, is a lot more messy.

As much as I laughed throughout the movie, I cannot mount a cogent defense of the film as entertainment, or even performance art, although the movie does leave you marveling at these guys' superhuman capacity to withstand pain. Compared to these jackasses, Vin Diesel is a big, overpaid wuss.

The whole enterprise sags and wheezes like the tired, we're-in-this-strictly-for-the-money sequel it really is.

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]

Even the people who griped about Tom Cruise being cast as the towering Jack Reacher will have to admit Statham fits nicely in Parker's shoes.

Because of James Belushi, Taking Care of Business is bearable. Even funny. [17 Aug 1990, p.G5]

The picture is perfectly watchable but rarely compelling, because the filmmakers are too timid to take any chances.

Entertains but never quite engages.

Isn't so much bad as it is puny: a sporadically amusing, occasionally funny, but ultimately bland and pointless time killer.

There are a few flashes of wit in the romantic comedy Austenland, but for the most part, the humor lands not with Dear Jane’s grace and style but with all the subtlety of a cholera outbreak.

It has several amiable performances, including Lithgow's usual nice guy, Lainie Kazan's savagely nosy neighbor, Margaret Langrick's petulant teen and Don Ameche as a bullion- hearted Bigfoot expert. And like Harry, in its own ham-handed, goofy way the film means so well. What the heck. [5 June 1987, p.D1]

Fox has that same spark about him early on here, but as For Love or Money grows more and more conventional, you can see him coast right through the thing. He looks bored, and since the proceedings depend so much on him, once he checks out the movie has little to offer. [1 Oct 1993, p.G5]

Feels every bit as cheap and flimsy as Edward's hospital.

The Family is the rare breed of pitch-black comedy that effectively uses violence for laughs or gasps, depending on the situation.

A lackluster holiday-theme comedy featuring production design half a notch above a snow globe and a star who doesn't so much act as revive a well-worn persona.

Generic but breezily entertaining.

A loud and relentlessly overstated B-movie, and yet not entirely stupid.

Footloose is for an audience that wants something easy to think about, a conflict in which the two sides are easy to distinguish and an "enemy" who is easy to look down upon. It's for the folks who like to skip dinner and go right to the cream- filled finale, and though not quite evil, it's as silly as can be. [1 Mar 1984, p.D12]

Oh, what a hollow experience Dark of the Moon is! Bay is so afraid of boring his audience, he pitches every scene at the same high volume right from the first shot, and the effect is exhausting.

Crazy People is one of those sky-high-concept titles, you know? A film with that title had better deliver, had better be stone crazy, wacky to the bone, nuts. With a title that blunt, you don't want to wind up with warmed-over farce of the sort that used to cast Dudley Moore opposite a tall, blond beauty....Uh-oh. [11 Apr 1990, p.D1]

Director Andy Cadiff and screenwriters Brian Levant and Lon Diamond have made a Leave It to Beaver that everyone can love. [22 Aug 1997, p.10G]

Jungle 2 Jungle turns out to be a perfectly pleasurable romp through the urban jungle of New York. [07 Mar 1997, p.6G]

A wan gloss on a horrific nightmare.

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