Pretentious, perplexing and plain rock-dumb movie.

Too inert to be titillating, too generic to be engaging.

Bloodsport offers some lurid but fascinating bits. Chief among them: Van Damme, his feet tied to two poles, performs horrifyingly painful splits. Otherwise, Bloodsport boasts bad acting, bad photography and a bad script. So much for the art of motion pictures. [03 May 1988, p.C4]

A surprisingly dull and witless film. [21 Jul 1984, p.C1]

How High is not a particularly good movie, but then again it's not trying to be. It's a project by two B-list rappers seeking to extend their music careers in the way of stars like Will Smith, Ice Cube and Tupac Shakur.

May be among the most excruciating mainstream movies to spew forth from Hollywood in years.

Too small to be a spectacle, too humorless to take seriously and too stupid to pass muster at a middle school writing workshop.

It is almost a prototypical action picture; there is never a moment when something isn't happening or about to happen, and the fact that most of the action makes no sense doesn't matter much when events move this fast. [27 Sep 1985, p.D7]

It's a formula and hard to describe as good in any artistic sense, but the viewers who pay to see it -- and many, many people are going to -- will get exactly what they want.

Fool's Gold isn't so much a film as an opportunity to pay homage to Matthew McConaughey's impressive physique.

According to legend, a silver bullet can kill a werewolf. Too bad it can't slay bad writing, without which the ill-conceived Red Riding Hood would not exist.

Just My Luck is way too long for such a slight premise, and Lohan, so appealing in Mean Girls, is years too young for the part.

A Disney family film, with all that the term implies: It's playful, corny, silly, adventuresome and enjoyable.

The Slugger's Wife is awful, easily the most inept mainstream Hollywood entertainment in memory. [29 March 1985, p.D19]

Sweet but colossally dull relationship movie.

The plot, a series of missed connections, grows boring. The action scenes have no oomph. And the actors are lost. As the disheveled Dan, Cusack is charming, but he can't make this tired tourist tale go. And he can't fall down a mountain as well as Kathleen Turner. [19 May 1987, p.D5]

You Again is at its funniest in the early scenes, when everyone is pretending all is well beneath forced smiles and plotting eyes.

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.

There's only one excuse for the sentimental and ham-handed I Am Sam, and it's not to tout the rights of the mentally disabled.

A garish clashing of sacred images and bloody semihorror, this is a movie that defines the category: interesting failure.

Swiss director and co-writer Dominique Othenin-Girard constructs his film like a carnival spook house -- something or someone shocks you every three minutes. They are familiar gimmicks, but the director adds suspenseful twists that are fun, too. [17 Oct 1989, p.C1]

Return to the Blue Lagoon? Why, exactly, would anyone want to? [05 Aug 1991, p.C3]

Time to give the shoot-’em-up thing a rest, guys: It’s tired and played out, and so are you.

Coincidentally, this is the second movie in two weeks about a haunted seafaring vessel ("Below" is the other), and if you see just one, this shouldn't be it.

Nobel Son is not good. Nor is it bad. It exists, instead, somewhere in the middle ground of interesting enough to hold one's attention without actually providing any fresh, sensible or nonderivative developments.

There's good stuff around the edges of the film -- all that word play and all those visual gags demand that you pay attention lest you miss something even in the slow scenes. But at the center, no magic. [01 Aug 1986, p.D1]

The movie operates on the same principle as the first: Show that each of us, however nerdy, has value; demonstrate that an ideal appearance can mask a nasty person; and give heart to nerds of the world by presenting these losers as triumphant. It does all these things, but not nearly as well as the first Nerds. [10 July 1987, p.D5]

Berliner deserves something better, as do all the actors -- even Moore, who's starting to look very interesting and European.