Guts, wit and soul, these suburban kids have it all: Babysitting outdoes even John Hughes in flattering its target audience, and for this it will doubtless be amply rewarded. [13 July 1987, p.60]

Employing an unconventional structure full of funny flashbacks and talking-to-the-camera monologues, Singles is brimful of clever bits and likable performances. Why, then does it seem so weightless? Something slick and generic has slipped into Crowe's work: too much of "Singles" feels like television. His sympathy for the youth culture now feels not so much uncanny as canned. You want to like a movie this inventive, this friendly, and you can't deny Crowe's talent. But "Singles" is all approach: it never seems to arrive. [21 Sept 1992, p.78]

This scary, eye-opening documentary looks back from a post-9/11 vantage point to see how Ike’s prophecy has come horribly true.

A romantic comedy for an era of diminished expectations.

What Scott brings to this, for him, surprisingly conventional genre moving is a superb sense of mood, seductive settings and a nice feel for the comedy of colliding social classes. Yet for all its tension and style, the movie feels thin. The obligatory violent ending is a real letdown: implausibly plotted and much too familiar. And while there's nothing wrong with Berenger's solid, witty performance, he's a little bland. [12 Oct 1987, p.84D]

What keeps this movie honest is the characters, each of them a mass of conflicting instincts, virtues and vices. You know Gonzalez Inarritu comes from outside Hollywood because he doesn't divide the world into heroes and villains.

Stone creates such a sizzling, raunchy, vital world that the cliches almost seem new.

Meg Ryan lends her trademark feistiness to Anastasia, and John Cusack makes Dimitri eminently likable.

There is one reason, and only one, for anyone to check out Vertical Limit. The hanging-by-a-fingernail mountain-climbing sequences are spectacular.

The nimble Hanks again proves his delicious way with a double take; Long is nothing if not likable, and Godunov is a supremely silly narcissist. If the filmmakers had trusted these performers more, and stuck closer to reality, things might have turned out better. Instead of a real-estate fiasco anybody could roar at in recognition. The Money Pit has been inflated into a noisy destruction derby. [21 Apr 1986, p.82D]

The spectacle played out in Levinson's lyrical, dark-hued images never achieves the emotional whiplash the movie's after. Levinson's somber elegance and Toback's volatile aggression don't quite mesh: perhaps what this story needed was the fleet, gaudy ferocity of a Sam Fuller. Bugsy never makes the transition from the filmmakers' heads to the audience's gut.

Sweetness is not a quality one normally associates with Clint Eastwood, but true sweetness is precisely what Bronco Billy aspires to -- and occasionally achieves. At once sentimental, arch and harmlessly good-natured, Eastwood's latest is a romantic comedy in which Clint appears as the fast-drawing, trick-riding star of his own Wild West show. [23 June 1980, p.77]

The plot is lame; the jokes are often broad, though if you have a weakness for dumb humor -- or you're under 10 years old -- you'll find them hilarious. [25 Nov 1991, p.56]

This movie has the weather of "Body Heat," the moral stance of "Absence of Malice" and the perverse plot-angle of "Tightrope." It's also not as good as any of these. [25 Feb 1985, p.85]

Hero unfolds with zest and confidence, yet as genuinely enjoyable as it is, it doesn't fully come together. For one thing, its satire of the heartless media is hardly novel anymore. [05 Oct 1992, p.73]

For Trek devotees, it's a supernova of unpredictable sci-fi thrills, though the earthbound may find this trip through the heavens a bit tiresome, especially when the movie tries too hard to wax philosophic. [18 Nov. 1994, p.88]

This is funny? Yes, as Pryor does it--not as knee-slapping farce, mind you, but as the painful comedy of endured humiliation of which he is the master... But it's high time Pryor stopped redeeming badly made movies and surrounded himself with talents equal to his own. [12 Apr 1982, p.87]

You can convince yourself you're having a good time watching Big Business. The idea seems so funny you smile in anticipation of the jokes, but the laughter is strangely tinny. It's a harmless concoction, but so mechanical it vanishes from your head the instant it's over. It should have been so much more. [13 Jun 1988, p.74]

As the proud, independent young author, Hathaway is both subdued and alluring--it's her most mature performance. The movie goes down easy, but there's a thin line here: is this an homage or a parasite?

Like "Airplane!", the film is teeming with funny ideas. Unlike "Airplane!", the majority do not come off...Top Secret! is mildly amusing at best. [25 June 1984, p.69]

Ridiculous, and oddly unforgettable.

Not a fiasco, a disaster or a scandal. But not as funny as it should have been, and not the trenchant office satire one was led to expect. As a comedy built on the juicy soil of revenge, "9 to 5" falls between two poles. It's not wild or dark enough to qualify as a truly disturbing farce and it's too fanciful and silly to succeed as realistic satire. Politically and esthetically, it's harmless--a mildly amusing romp that tends to get swallowed up by its own overly intricate plot. [22 Dec 1980, p.72]

This Man in Black is, frankly, a bit of a wuss. As a love story, Walk the Line can seduce. As a biopic, it treads awfully familiar Overcoming Adversity turf.

Torn between celebration and sendup, CB4 misses its big target as often as it hits. Still, it's hard not to chuckle when Rock, in a slow-motion lovers-running-in-the-field montage, trips and falls under an excess of gold chains, or when he experiences a nightmare vision of his future in the Hip Hop Retirement Home.

The heart of the movie is in the Rocky-Rusty relationship, and as long as Bogdanovich sticks with Cher and Stoltz, his film is genuinely moving and largely free of cant. Far more problematic is the portrait of the biker gang who, for all their rowdiness, are about as threatening as Santa's elves. [04 Mar 1985, p.74]

The movie tries too hard. Too bad. This coulda been a contender.

Boorman is both a romantic and a realist, an idealist and a skeptic, and Excalibur is an impressive but uneasy attempt to marry these opposites. [13 April 1981, p.82]

Ready to Wear is all appetizers: the main course never arrives. Still, the critical savagery puzzles me. Altman's movie may be indefensible, but it's not unenjoyable. The fun of it is entirely superficial, like skimming a gossip column.