You won't necessarily applaud The Notebook's excesses, but its final moments of grace will leave you in a sodden heap on the theater floor.

The best-developed theme in 2010, in fact, is anti-climax. Many scenes have one, the entire movie seems to be one. And we still don't know what the deal is with that monolith. [7 Dec 1984, p.D1]

Fast and funny, and grown-ups will not suffer sitting through it.

This is what we call a movie-movie, a movie that throws nuance and self-consciousness and artiness to the wind and concentrates on the slam-bam. It's richly entertaining, it's big, it moves fast. [10 Aug 1984, p.C1]

As with many biopics, Richard is seen as the perfect hero, a man who singlehandedly changed the way the United States treats its disabled citizens. That's a bit of a stretch.

Alice in Wonderland is curiously devoid of metaphors and allegories about a young woman on the cusp of adulthood, about to be engaged by arrangement to a loathsome toad of a man she can barely stomach. The lack of psychological subtext is hugely disappointing.

Fleischer has missed his opportunities to get real comic- book style humor out of this movie. It could have been a lot of belly laughs -- but as it is, it's only an occasional snide chuckle. [04 July 1984, p.B5]

Why does The Big Year's trailer intentionally hide what the film is really about? Here's why: Because bird-watching - or birding, as practitioners prefer to call it - makes for a stupefyingly boring movie.

It's another portrait of amoral, hedonistic youth gone awry, a la Larry Clark's "Bully", and it is alternately engrossing and ridiculous, often in the span of one scene to the next.

Much of it makes no sense whatever, and the most interesting element is watching Neeson and Adam Baldwin, who plays a psychopathic Mafia underboss, steal the picture from under Swayze's nose. [7 Nov 1989, p.C8]

A confused mess of music video montages drowns out the rest of the action, depicting the foursome in a variety of sexy romps that clash with the plot.

Eclectic, grandly engaging documentary.

All in all it's a decent, well-put-together romantic drama to hold hands to on the weekend.

This is one of the silliest plots since Disney cast Gus the mule as the star place-kicker for a hapless football team. Although it sounds like a whimsical throwback to Gus and another classic of the genre, The Absent Minded Professor, Rookie of the Year fails to connect. [09 Jul 1993, p.G4]

Midler sweeps into scenes with divine force, and Tomlin plays off her co-star with a barrage of comic nuance. Tomlin is playing parts, Midler is plying shtick, and it's wonderful. [10 Jun 1988, p.D1]

It's a good, solid family film.

Delicacy bears a slight whiff of Anthony Minghella's fantastic "Truly Madly Deeply," but while Minghella's film is a romantic comedy classic, Delicacy hovers just this side of memorable.

No rose-colored memories can improve this tedious interpretation of the famous girl detective's adventures. Nancy Drew falls somewhere between "The Haunted Mansion" and the live-action "Scooby Doo" movies in terms of quality but is more irritating than either.

Based on a graphic novel, 30 Days of Night opens with a premise so promising it seems almost impossible to screw up.

A wobbly enterprise saddled by stilted dialogue and convenient contrivances. But view it as a Woody Allen film, and the plot thickens.

Keaton is funny when she's tough, and funny when she's soft; the Baby Boom combination, for all the film's calculations and shameless cooing (the baby's dubbed, for pity's sake), is quite appealing. [7 Oct 1987, p.D8]

There's enough outrageousness and ribald humor in Kika to please Almodovar fans, and though the movie is far from being his most accessible, even newcomers will find much to like, provided they can follow his eccentric, offbeat rhythms. [6 May 1994, p.G4]

Turns out to be a more disappointment than joyful reunion, a tedious and desperately drawn-out affair that tests your patience even as it brazenly courts (and often earns) your contempt.

An unknown commodity to anyone who doesn't follow telenovelas, Becker is sure to be a big star and has already signed on for two sequels. Apart from being scorching hot, he's enormously sympathetic in dramatic scenes.

Oshima, the director who was once celebrated for the elaborately scandalous eroticism of In the Realm of the Senses, is here merely impenetrable -- though whatever it is that Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence is about, Oshima does seem to mean it. [30 Sep 1983, p.D2]

The several ideas whizzing about in this story are frankly fascinating, and though there are times when the film seems sadly out of date, the film has a real pull to it. [16 Mar 1990, p.G5]

Doesn't conclude so much as just stop, because Brooks, having come up with a great hook for a movie, didn't bother to come up with a satisfying story to go along with it.

Comes packed with so many plot twists and reversals, there's barely any room left over for a story: The movie is all clever gotchas and hoodwinks, without any substance to go along with them.