Unfaithfully Yours turns mildly manic in its last half-hour or so, but it's not enough to redeem that first hour, when Moore and Kinski go through familiar motions in search of something special. For too much of their movie, what they're looking for isn't there. [13 Feb 1984, p.C6]

The last 40 minutes test your patience -- and intelligence -- in a way the rest of this big, dumb, crazy movie never does:

Something happened to Mark Medoff's moving Children of a Lesser God in its translation from stage to screen: Somebody turned it into a soft-focus Hallmark card about deaf people. [3 Oct 1986, p.D1]

The movie is intentionally elusive, like a memory you can’t quite fully recall, but the result has all the depth and weight of a greeting card.

George Burns gets to play both sides of the cosmic fence in Oh God! You Devil, which is actually Oh God! III, and it's this device alone that saves the film, which might otherwise be unbearably cute. [12 Nov 1984, p.C1]

Neurotic New Yorkers, messed up relationships, inept analysts, infidelity -- Ira & Abby has them all, and it's anything but refreshing to trudge through this well-worn territory again.

Suffers from an episodic script and an overly long running time plagued by too many dull, laugh-free patches.

The screenplay by W.D. Richter (The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai) turns Needful Things into a pitch-black comedy -- a rather lifeless one, unfortunately. There are more laughs than scares, though the movie still carries a creepy undercurrent of nastiness that pops up periodically, to great effect. [27 Aug 1993, p.G5]

Chase and D'Angelo are clever and naturally funny, and they're well-matched. And yet the movie is dumb, so dumb it must have taken some work to make it that way. Perhaps next the Griswalds should make a forced march through a Hollywood executive's brain. [27 July 1985, p.B3]

It's all very sweet, but the film goes in too many directions.

Here, finally, is a superhero movie your AP English teacher can enjoy.

For Keeps is schizoid entertainment. It begins as a comedy, shifts briefly into social commentary and winds up in soap opera land, with Ringwald acting nobly and self-sacrificing. The movie has been heralded as a sign of Hollywood's new maturity, because the kids face up to their situation. That is applaudable, but For Keeps is old-fashioned and obvious. It is to teen pregnancy what My Three Sons was to family life. [15 Jan 1988, p.C5]

The cast, which includes Kim Cattrall (Sex and the City) as a coach who pushes her daughter too hard, is likable and energetic, and the film's messages are entirely reasonable.

A muddled fantasy revolving around a really good cruise ship piano player, doesn''t live up to its title.

There's a fine little western lurking inside Open Range: Too bad it gets drowned out by director Kevin Costner's pretentiousness. Almost everything in the movie feels inflated, overblown, drawn out.

The Prophecy suffers from an overall dreariness, a surprising lack of suspense and sloppy, rapid-fire editing. Despite Walken's alternately amusing and frightening performance, the low-budget movie becomes so tedious that, by the end, even a cameo by the Prince of Darkness fails to impress. [05 Sep 1995, p.5D]

Hugh Grant and Sarah Jessica Parker are supposed to pass for a married couple, but they have all the chemistry of two actors who just met and shook hands moments before the cameras rolled. They don't even seem to like each other much.

The Avengers has a knockout final 30 minutes, all gee-whiz crash and bang and eye candy that makes grand use of 3D and IMAX and all the other toys. But the Transformers movies did that, too.

Penn and Oldman booze and brawl and fight a losing battle. Their worst enemy, alas, is their director's self-indulgence. [05 Oct 1990, p.G5]

As it is, Gemma Bovery is as dry as day-old bread: Not inedible, but why bother with it if you can find something fresher?

Unlike this summer's compulsively watchable "Hustle & Flow," Get Rich or Die Tryin' captures none of the thrill of finding your voice, recording a demo or landing a concert.

If nothing else, the movie proves even the rich and famous make boring home videos.

Video-game-come-true plot is corny, but somehow it works. [13 July 1984, p.D10]

The result is earnest, admirable and more than a little dull -- a pedestrian movie about a remarkable subject.

A facile treatment of a complicated subject.

This tale, about a young woman and her quest to become one of the knights of King Arthur's Round Table, turns out to be scarier than it is charming: a real shame, considering the effort and talent that has gone into the production. [15 May 1998, p.7G]

If nothing else, You I Love delivers a brisk and spirited little taste of contemporary Russian culture through the eyes of three spontaneous, unpredictable and oddly charming characters.

It's not that Fear of a Black Hat isn't funny: It is, on occasion. It's just that much of this rap music spoof, done in the style of a mock Spinal Tap documentary, feels woefully out of date. Two years ago, it might have been a hip, must-see comedy: Today, it plays like a warmed-over rerun. [24 Jun 1994, p.G6]