The overall film is hideously grating, thanks to an inconsistent look, animated titles all over the place, excessive explanatory commentary and abrasive R&B videos inserted throughout.

As a document of rockin, youth rebellion, the film lodges perfectly between "American Graffiti" and "Trainspotting."

There's enough substance here to make Crazy/Beautiful more than worthwhile for its target audience, and certainly more useful than the standard teen crapfests.

It's by turns poignant and cold, twisted and sweet, dreamy and drab, effortless and overwrought. In short, the movie is a stunning, ambitious mess that leaves you wondering how much better it might have been without Kubrick's specter peering over Spielberg's heavy shoulders.

Charged by Rideau's amazingly sexy performance as the most forthright gay character put on screen to date, this is a fine piece of filmmaking.

From the start, a comprehensible, if necessarily simplified, sense of an extremely complicated moment in history.

It's a feel-good movie that happens to have a lot of feel-bad in it. The gratuitous violence sucks, and the pat conclusion prompts one to shout don't believe the hope!.

It makes as good a case as any for the use of animation as a medium for serious, mature features.

The cornerstone of this fascinating film is a peculiar but absolutely solid love story. In terms of intellectual and emotional stimulation, who could ask for more?

Guaranteed to jolt viewers of a Norman Rockwell mentality well into the 21st century.

The movie may be intellectually sophomoric, dramatically adolescent and morally vacuous, but it's good fun while it lasts.

It's a modest family comedy, probably fun for kids and reasonably cute, or at least not too insufferable, for most of the grownups who will take them.

Hard to watch, harder still to ignore.

If you peel away the surface of this movie, one is left with not much at all.

All in all, this is every inch a TV movie.

A film whose surface charm never gets in the way of its profound seriousness about living life to the fullest -- especially when one knows it isn't going to be a terribly long one.

It's the most uplifting movie of a numbing year -- a feel-good film full of songs about feeling god-awful.

Combines strong feminist sensibilities with surprisingly old-fashioned melodrama.

One of the compulsively watchable films this year, second only to "Memento." It's a must-see, except for those with a sensitivity to on-screen mayhem.

Dramatically effective, thanks in large part to Montand's impassioned performance.

Were it not for the gravity of the setting, the movie could just as easily be a comedy -- with everybody play-acting and doors opening and shutting and the repercussions of lies multiplying geometrically -- as a drama.

It's an interesting, often worthwhile, film, but humor isn't its strongest attribute.

If you like stuff breaking in THX, Swordfish delivers like no other this year. Bring earplugs.

While the whole is diverting, the ending's utter repudiation of reality seems like pissing on the audience; -- we feel like we've been suckers for bothering to care about the characters at all.

The highpoint of the film, acting-wise, comes from Bernadette Peters.

Evolution is merely stale, sterile and, worst of all, safe.

When it's all over, one is less compelled to applaud than to give each "character" a sympathetic hug.

A thrilling tale smartly told, with an abundance of wit and invention. It's a classic.