If Ghost in the Machine isn't the stupidest thriller of the year, it certainly holds the pole position in the race for that honor. The film combines computer hacking, virtual reality and serial murder into a plot so preposterous, so incredibly ridiculous, you keep watching just to see what the filmmakers will dare to do next. [31 Dec 1993, p.G5]

This misguided gangster rap movie had every strike against it from the start.

Doctor Detroit is Dan Aykroyd's first big solo vehicle, and it has some traditional Motown problems: It sputters and wheezes and lurches, never does run smoothly, never does satisfy. In the spirit of products from another troubled industry, this is a raucous comedy that just doesn't have very many jokes. [10 May 1983, p.B5]

Belushi, the only actor to get away with calling Arnold Schwarzenegger Gumby (in Red Heat), wisecracks his way through K-9 -- even in a sappy injured-dog sequence. But despite his efforts, a muddled story has his comic talents on a tight leash. [01 May 1989, p.C5]

Like its eponymous subject, it succeeds only in being shallow and crass and not very much fun to be around.

The timing is off, the gags lame, the twists predictable, the crudity rampant and unamusing.

This is easily one of the silliest, most preposterous thrillers ever made, and the only reason it didn't go straight to video has to be that it stars Pacino.

Among the many problems with the Generation Acne romantic comedy She's All That is that a self-consciously stupid, 9-year-old TV series ["Beverly Hills: 90210"] has covered the same territory with more smarts, style and laughs, albeit the unintentional kind. This movie exists solely to snag a cut of the weekly allowance doled out to bored mall brats. And even they would probably prefer shopping. [29 Jan 1999, p.5G]

Parts of House are certainly meant to be funny, and other parts draw laughs the way the tools move, without the apparent intent of their creators. As haunted-house tales go, House is something of a bust. [4 March 1986, p.B5]

This is a disastrously clumsy, heavy-handed movie, one so desperate and exploitative that it resorts to putting a live grenade in the hands of a baby in order to get its message across.

You don't go into a movie called Ninja Assassin expecting a hell of a lot, but this shockingly disjointed and relentlessly dull picture can't even deliver the martial-arts kick its title so plainly promises.

Yes, it's every bit as brainless as the trailers suggest.

I'd have thought you'd get more for $3 million. The dialogue here is among the worst in modern big-budget memory; even the cliches are lame. [20 Mar 1992, p.G5]

Even a film as shabby and humdrum as Beverly Hills Chihuahua, which never musters up the wit and beauty of a single frame of "Lady and the Tramp," is not without its pleasures.

The movie has an undeniable visceral power. It is also a loud, grating wallow in dime-store despair, a cheap and hollow button-puncher.

Watching Adventures in Babysitting is like eating a carton of candy bars. The first bites are sweet, but after a while, you're gagging. This is one gooey confection. [07 July 1987, p.C7]

Tedious and trite.

The biggest problem with Surviving the Game is that, after a rather lengthy and uninteresting buildup, the movie never delivers the action it promises. [19 Apr 1994, p.E2]

War is hell, and so are bad movies about war.

The knock on movies like Wildcats used to be that they belong not on the big screen, but on TV. But times have changed. Wildcats isn't good television, either. It's just Goldie Hawn's latest. [10 March 1986, p.C6]

A wan gloss on a horrific nightmare.

Rich in cliché and brimming with the sort of potent idiocy that can only be found in January-release romantic comedies, Leap Year manages to do every possible thing wrong.

Hellraiser III manages to make even the fearsome Pinhead himself seem like. . .well, a pinhead. Clive, it's time to give these characters a rest. [19 Sep 1992, p.E5]

This is ultimately a movie about highly intelligent people in pursuit of trivial nonsense: At least Mulder and Scully caught a real monster every once in a while.

The Hotel New Hampshire, in which John Irving's novel comes to the screen, is such a mess that it does not feel like a film at all. It's a kind of endurance contest, an epic bout with the cutes, in which the audience is made to confront a long, quirky line of performers playing oddball "types," and is then given only a handful of platitudes by which the explain the experience. "Sorrow floats" is the story's most profound statement, though there are others. [3 Apr 1984, p.C5]

Winds up suffocating you with its aura of bogus, store-bought nostalgia.

The film does provide some nice shots of Venice and offers one solid reason to display a little patriotic fervor: We do have the freedom to avoid such rote, shallow dullness.

It's more interested in enlightening than entertaining, and Kidron seems to go out of her way to sap the life out of every scene. It's a horribly directed movie. [08 Sep 1995, p.5G]