When the youngsters are out of the way and old pros Hackman and Weaver work, it's hard to really dislike Heartbreakers. Sometimes, it's even a little bit of harmless fun.

Here is a film in which nothing is at stake: Cars crash into each other head-on at high speeds, vehicles sail off cliffs and tumble down rocky mountainsides, people jump out of buildings and fall six stories to the ground, then characters just dust themselves off and continue as if nothing had happened. Even Wile E. Coyote wasn't this resilient.

The writers have 13-year-old humor in their hearts and an overdose of late-night movies in their minds. But there was no snowballing of the humor; the jokes leave you tickled, but never build to a comic crescendo. [23 June 1984, p.D6]

Badham, a consummate craftsman, certainly knows how to stage his action sequences competently, but they lack spontaneity and thrills. The movie careens from one concocted obstacle to the next and ends with the most ridiculous and overlong sequence of all. [18 May 1990, p.G5]

Twisted is a movie so derivative it's hard to pinpoint exactly how many other thrillers it poaches from.

Considering the talent involved, Fathers' Day comes off as a whopping disappointment. Williams and Crystal are a good team: You just wouldn't know it by watching them here. [9 May 1997, p.4G]

The remake seems to have been written and directed by people whose only experience with children is the long-distant memory of having been kids themselves so many years ago.

Comes off as an episode of "Beverly Hills, 90210" where, instead of spoiled rich kids, the characters are all ballet stars in the making.

Gridiron Gang is not imaginative, but neither is it painful to watch.

What Passion ultimately lacks most, ironically, is passion, the artistic fervor that distinguished all his best pictures. This one feels like a throwaway by a gifted filmmaker who has run out of ideas.

Repetitious, uneventful and, in the end, dull.

Elaborate special effects ruin the whimsy of this haunted house movie. The filmmakers parcel out the horrific gags so tirelessly they lose sight of the tale they're telling. This is one ghost story that needed an exorcism. [30 March 1988, p.C8]

The racing itself is entertaining enough, though it's not so mesmerizing as the shorter, more focused competition in the far-superior "Seabiscuit."

In the sequel, Weitz lays on a pop song and slow-motion during a critical scene involving the sudden reappearance of a fearsome villain, giving everything an MTV-slick, teen-friendly gloss and reminding you this is just a movie -- a somewhat silly and hollow one.

There's enough gee-whiz bang in Richie Rich to keep young viewers entertained, though much of it is woefully uninspired. [21 Dec 1994, p.E1]

The film rarely makes any sense, and the climactic confrontation is incomprehensible. [10 May 1991, p.G5]

All is Lost is more fun to think about than it is to actually watch: It’s a testament to a great actor, an experimental piece of cinema and a bit of a bore.

The Coens feel out of step this time; they’ve lost their rhythm the way they did in The Hudsucker Proxy, where the style consumed the entire picture, turning what should have been humorous and snappy into a grating chore.

It's the cinematic equivalent of Bon Jovi's You Give Love a Bad Name: You know in your heart it's a crappy song, and every wince-inducing line is an affront to your intelligence, but hey, it's on the radio, so you turn up the volume and sing along anyway.

It's all in the telling, and Loggerheads practically aches with its own heal-the-world earnestness.

In a move reminiscent of Gus Van Sant's "Psycho," some shots are lifted directly from the original and much of the screenplay is identical.

Cradle boasts a couple of bravura fight and chase scenes but they're stranded amid the predictable and the pedestrian.

A competent but utterly unnecessary retelling of the story.

Too bad Journey of Man, as a whole, is never as consistently compelling as that one visually arresting scene (with Yves Décoste and Marie-Laure Mesnage)

LL Cool J. plays God like a medieval king.

More than adequate performances by Grant and Caan, who play off each other with a relative degree of aplomb.

A View to a Kill, also like recent Bonds, is long. And though it is crammed with action -- car chase, boat chase, blimp chase, you lose track -- it begins, by the second hour, to seem quite long indeed. [24 May 1985, p.D5]

Planes, Trains and Automobiles is the movie equivalent of a tired stand-up comic's air-travel routine. It strikes some resonant chords indeed, but it never quite leaves the ground, either. And given the stars here, that's a real bungle. [25 Nov 1987, p.D1]