Like binging on a bottomless box of truffles: Tastes good and sweet at first, but after a while, you start feeling a little green.

It's Amy Poehler and Will Arnett, as a rival brother-sister skating team who are a little too intimate for comfort, who seem to be giving it their all. If only the movie had been about them.

It's the kind of movie for which the phrase ''you've never seen anything like it before'' was invented. The question is whether anyone would want to.

Co-written by Tony Gilroy, who penned the tricky "Michael Clayton" and the even trickier "Duplicity," State of Play displays its savvy without being quite so showy.

Cloak and Dagger does have its charms. It also has its tense moments, and an unforced sentimentality that helps it end on just the right note. And it's nicely performed. [10 Aug 1985, p.6]

Though there's a scene of racial discomfort (nothing more serious) and a few rather flat-footed references to anti-war feelings back home in Hamburger Hill, the sense of time and place is missing altogether. Hamburger Hill is an all-purpose war movie with the requisite noble message -- war is hell, and futile, too -- but it could be set anywhere. In those parts of the world where local audiences will not accept an American adventure movie with the Vietnamese as vanquished foe (parts of Southeast Asia were shown Rambo with subtitles that portrayed it as a anti-Japanese commando raid from World War II), Hamburger Hill will play with few problems...Unhappily, neither screenwriter Jim Carabatsos (who did Heartbreak Ridge for Clint Eastwood) nor director John Irvin is able to provide the story any tighter focus, either. [28 Aug 1987, p.D1]

Yes, Pineapple Express is exceedingly crude, but it's never mean or lewd, and for all the drugs and gore in it, the movie is also strangely, unrelentingly sweet, even when its characters are bleeding to death.

But by the time you understand the meaning of its title, Sabiha Sumar's film has delivered an emotional punch.

Like all bad thrillers, and some very good ones, The Hand That Rocks the Cradle doesn't always make a whole lot of sense and seems to depend overmuch on coincidence, happenstance and shameless contrivance. But that doesn't matter. The Hand That Rocks the Cradle will scare the wits out of you anyway. Pick it apart later, when you're home safe and sound. You won't have the chance while the show's on. [10 Jan 1992, p.G5]

An ensemble cast brimming with great theater actors and movie stars tears into a collection of meaty, moving, funny roles, with largely vibrant results.

It turns out to be a satisfying, if occasionally wandering, adventure.

Fried Green Tomatoes doesn't mean to be schizophrenic, really; it's a story within a story, and both are well-developed and wonderfully cast. It's just that the past is so much more captivating than the present that it makes you wish the memory movie could stand alone. [14 Jan 1992, p.C1]

Make no mistake, Arctic Tale is a stunning film, full of all the astonishing, even breathtaking nature photography we've come to expect from the folks at National Geographic.

The most enjoyable piece of pop fantasy of the summer; sleek, elegant, exciting and wildly, outrageously imaginative.

Soon settles down into a drizzle of steady mediocrity, never living up to all the frenzy of those first few moments.

Has a weird, compelling energy, fueled by a deliciously dynamic cast, a cheerfully bawdy and odd story line and a refreshing, impossible romance.

Explosively funny in spots -- this is easily Vaughn's best work since "Swingers" -- but it comes wrapped in a package so sweet and sugary, so tediously moral and conventional, it sabotages the laughs.

It's like watching "The Treasure of Sierra Madre" as remade by "Nightline."

Freedom Writers is prone to throwing in unnecessary plot developments, so it never quite succeeds as anything more than "Dangerous Minds" Redux.

So hilarious that even longtime Ferrell haters (me) can't resist it.

Flight of the Navigator is a cheerfully unaccomplished little movie, a kind of E.T. for kids that recalls the Disney live-action films of a generation ago. E.T is not the only movie borrowed from here; there are echoes of Back to the Future and most of the rest of the last decade's science-fiction fantasies, though Flight of the Navigator is generous in acknowledging its sources. It's a happy knockoff. [31 July 1986, p.C5]

What sets it slightly apart is a willingness to deal with a potentially tricky subject -- race -- in the context of light-hearted fluff.

The movie is at its most chilling, oddly enough, when one or another chase isn't going on. The real fun begins when Ryan becomes desperate and goes for help to his old pals in intelligence. This is prime Clancy material -- high-tech surveillance, computerized image enhancement, Intelligence with a capital "I." [5 June 1992, p.G5]

Whenever the film starts getting overly sticky, Perez swoops in to even things out. If there isn't a fat smile plastered on your face as It Could Happen to You comes to its whimsical, crowd-pleasing finale, consider yourself a cynic. [29 July 1994, p.G6]

Very, very faithful to Proof the play.

If you're a movie buff, The Big Picture will be hilarious. If you're not, it should be revealing. [01 Dec 1989, p.G8]

The Muppet Christmas Carol never approaches the freewheeling atmosphere of earlier Muppet movies. While all the familiar Muppet characters appear, they often seem stilted; watching Kermit and Miss Piggy acting as Bob and Emily Cratchit is nowhere near as much fun as watching them play themselves. With too few exceptions, the movie doesn't allow the Muppets to inject their own personalities into their characters. [14 Dec 1992, p.C6]

As far as production values go, this Peter Pan is a work of art. So why, then, does the movie feel so crushingly dull?