Jaw 2 is not a shipwreck of a movie; it'll make you jump now and then, like a boring guy tickling your ribs. But it lacks the style and intelligence that director Steven Spielberg brough to the original "Jaws". Jennot Szwarc, a French-born teveision specialist, come nowhere near Spielberg's blend of kinetic drive and comic touch. [19 June 1978, p.74]

May only be remembered for featuring the first homoerotic nude bathing scene in children's animated movie history.

A slick but surprisingly empty genre movie that builds to a not particularly shocking shock.

Thomas is supported in his first directorial endeavor by a truly spectacular cast.

Heavy Metal is the bummer version of "Star Wars," an expression of adolescent revenge against the world. What gives the movie its thoroughly unpleasant integrity is the suspicion it arouses that the guys who dreamed this stuff up mean business. If only they'd saved it for their shrinks. [10 Aug 1981, p.69]

Director Donald Wrye handles this chestnut with restraint, scoring points about media madness and the fear of success without getting messagy. [05 Feb 1979, p.79]

All the state-of-the-art technology in the world is no help to an actor saddled with Lucas's tinny dialogue.

The fact is, you are not the kind of novel who should be turned into a move. Without McInerney's deft, witty prose to divert and amuse us, where's the beef in "Bright Lights"? [4 Apr 1988, p.72]

It may be clumsily made, shamelessly contrived and utterly cynical in its calculated uplift, but there's no getting around it: the damn thing is funny.

Ridiculous, and oddly unforgettable.

I don't want to sound like a party pooper (or deny that there is something wickedly funny about seeing these middle-age adolescents beating the crap out of a playground full of little bullying kids) but there's something depressing about the never-ending celebration of eternal adolescence in recent American comedies.

Spielberg doesn't differentiate between the good ideas in the script and the bad ones: everything is given an emphatic, production-number treatment... His ultraslick, seductive technique can be a pleasure to watch in itself, but it can't disguise the fact that "Always" is a decidedly uneternal fantasy. [1 Jan. 1990, p.60]

We don't really need some young punk to tell us that anarchy is an untenable idea, but watching him live it is an invigorating experience.

A flat, cliched film in a flat, cliched genre.

Watching Robin Williams's new movie, Cadillac Man, spin hopelessly out of control, you know intuitively that there was no single storyteller at the wheel, but a committee of back-seat drivers inflating a small, decent idea into an incoherent, opportunistic concept. Trying desperately to speak to everyone, these star packages have no voice of their own. They're not really movies -- they're product. [28 May 1990, p.72]

The movie, half camp, half straight, has its moments, but Australian director Russell Mulcahy lacks the loopy flair of Batman's Tim Burton. Still, the art deco -- 1930s New York, Miller's silvery dresses -- is gorgeous. [11 Jul 1994, p.50]

Sidney Lumet's new film does have its absorbing aspects, but it doesn't provide any jolting insights into the pervasive process that turns elections into advertising wars in which candidates come fixing at us like Peter Pepsi and Calvin Coke. [10 Feb 1986, p.79]

But the tale has been squeezed to fit the mold of director John Hughes, which for long stretches makes it feel as much like the third "Home Alone" as the second "Dalmations."

Eastwood has no more singing talent than Citizen Kane's mistress, and this oh-so-well-intentioned movie takes more than two tepid hours to show us the boy becoming a man, the man achieving his dream and somebody singing Swing Low, Sweet Chariot over his grave. They'll have to come for to carry you home after this one. [27 Dec 1982, p.62]

Has its flaws, but at its best it’s a fleet, fun action movie -- and certainly one of the cooler blockbusters that Hollywood will cough up this godforsaken summer.

Peaks early, then descends into portentous nonsense.

Badham's not-inconsiderable accomplishment is to have produced a decently entertaining romp composed entirely of borrowed parts. But however much one regrets to admit it, the movie is fun. [02 June 1986, p.75]

Fat Man and Little Boy casts a wide net, but it never really traps its subject. The screenplay simply isn't up to the job. Only in the last half hour, as Trinity approaches, does dramatic fission occur. [30 Oct 1989, p.75]

American Flyers is too accomplished not to wring tears, but you may want to kick and scream before you succumb. [09 Sep 1985, p.90]

No matter how important teamwork is on a job of industrialized entertainment like these ostensibly visionary films, the vision itself has to come from a single inspired sensibility. Despite some intriguing ideas, episodes and effects, that isn't the case with "Star Trek." [17 Dec. 1979, p.110]

All the surprises strenuously cooked up by screenwriter Patrick Smith Kelly and director Andrew ("The Fugitive") Davis can't overcome the movie's inability to make us care about any of its paper-thin characters.

The longest, grimmest and least funny of the trilogy.

Roberts and Gibson form a "pas de deux," two lonely urbanites fighting vague yet common enemies in a plot that never quite comes together.