The new Fame is practically identical to Alan Parker's 1980 original -- I mean, it's the same damn movie -- except for all the parts with heart and humor and poignancy and soul and fun.

Whatever goodwill Stuart Saves His Family manages to work up disappears by the maudlin, dramatic finale. [14 Apr 1995, p.5G]

British satire loses something when it's handled by Americans: You miss the perspective that a foreign culture brings, so instead of wit and humor, you end up trafficking in self-congratulatory clichés and sentiment.

For most of its running time, Wes Craven's New Nightmare is simply a s-l-o-w- tease to a paradoxical, reality-bending shockfest that never materializes. [14 Oct 1994, p.G9]

Two things are going on in The Razor's Edge, the second movie adaptation of Somerset Maugham's novel. One is that Bill Murray, the comedian, is trying a dramatic role for the first time. Another is that people out in the seats are being bored to tears. [19 Oct 1984, p.D1]

The whole thing is so listless and mechanical, watching it is a curiously dispiriting experience. You start hoping someone whips out a bear suit.

The Legend of Tarzan doles out big beats of action at regular intervals to keep you awake, like a drunkard clashing trashcan lids in an alley late at night. But your eyelids grow heavy anyway.

Timeline gives Gigli serious competition for worst film of the year honors.

A royal mess, a lethally stupid romantic teen comedy.

The script is by Chris Columbus (Home Alone), who also directed, and it's as lazy as it is maudlin. [24 May 1991, p.G13]

Janeane Garofalo is all wrong as the giraffe, whom the animators contort into all manner of weird positions so she can share the frame with pint-size love interest Benny the squirrel (Jim Belushi).

White Men Can't Jump clocks in at just under two hours of court-stomping, in-your-face, anything-goes street basketball. And that's all, folks. [31 Mar 1992, p.E6]

The Edge was written by playwright/filmmaker David Mamet and directed by Lee Tamahori (Once Were Warriors, Mulholland Falls). Both excel at dissecting that complicated beast known as male angst, but both fall flat with this confused misfire that plays as a banal stranded-in-the-wild adventure for grown-ups. [26 Sep 1997, p.4G]

Young girls are the only ones likely to enjoy this vapid road-trip movie.

Cobra looks and sounds as bad as it does because Stallone hired George P. Cosmatos (Rambo), a hack with no ideas, to direct, and because Stallone wrote the screenplay himself. No excuses: This movie is just the way the highest paid and hence most powerful man in Hollywood wanted it. You take a long look at the thing, you keep that in mind: This is the film he meant to make. [24 May 1986, p.D1]

The brothers (Farrelly) produced Say It Isn't So, which bears their stamp in every frame and features all of the elements their movies are known for, except one: laughter.

Raises a few questions -- like just what were they thinking?

Oddly tone deaf.

It is absolutely, inexcusably terrible.

This would all be a lot more fun if Jason were ever in jeopardy, but since we know he can't be killed -- the best one can hope to do is bottle him up and store him, like toxic waste -- the charm of the film depends on action in the margins. Part VI, for instance, had a sense of humor; II and III had a splendid variety of weaponry. No jokes this time, however, and Jason contents himself for the most part with the ax blow, the tent-pole stab and the simple head-twist. He's old, and he has lost a step. [17 May 1988, p.B4]

Inherently laughable, but in all the wrong ways.

Drowns in its own noxious fumes. Who knew being bad could be so dull?

Downright terrible: impossible to enjoy, impossible to believe.

I guess Perfect is a movie about aerobics, journalism, ethics and love and a couple of hunks. It is even more stupid than it sounds. It is the stupidest thing I have seen this year, in or out of the movies. [7 June 1985, p.C9]

Crushingly inept family comedy.

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.

"The silence will kill you!" warn the posters for Silent House. That's only if the boredom doesn't get you first, though.