When the boys who play the Bears are on screen, which is often, their natural high spirits and spontaneity do much to enliven the tired script and soft direction. Kids will still find watching them vacation-time fun. But in the end, the Bad News Bears without Matthau, O'Neal and Ritchie is like the Mets without Tom Seaver - deep in the doldrums. [08 Aug 1977, p.77]

Demme is understandably reluctant to linger on the horrors of slavery, but it's a dramaturgical mistake. The quick, shocking flashbacks of Sethe's brutalization by her white masters don't do the job--they're horrific, but with a B movie luridness.

Tom Hanks displays his usual comic finesse as Friday's rule-bending new sidekick, but it's Aykroyd's movie -- what movie there it. The fact is, ma'am, this Dragnet doesn't add up to much. [13 July 1987, p.60]

Fortunately for Hughes and director Howard Deutch, Juliet is played by the fetching 18-year-old Molly Ringwald, an actress capable of revealing adolescent angst with amazing grace. Unfortunately, Romeo is an underwritten blank who resists all of actor Andrew McCarthy's efforts to make him charming. The manic Mercutio role goes to Juliet's bosom buddy The Duck (Jon Cryer), an ehibitionist cutup who loses the girl he adores to a guy who doesn't deserve her. "Pretty in Pink is a gentle and well-meaning sketch of teen peer pressures, but its dopey, feel-good ending leaves you suspecting that what you've really been watching is Much Ado About Nothing. [17 March 1986, p.82]

Penn's eye for landscapes is stunning, and his affection for outsider lifestyles is tangible. Hirsch, who carries the film on his increasingly emaciated shoulders, performs heroically, but there's an edge missing. The ideal casting would have been the young Sean Penn.

After its compelling first hour, The Indian Runner gets self-indulgent and repetitive. But Penn has the gifts of a real filmmaker -- an eye, an ear and a heart. [23 Sep 1991, p.57B]

It groans under the burden of explanations and exposition, not to mention moral homilies. Family love can conquer evil, according to director Brian Gibson's sequel, which is very nice to know but not why anybody will plunk down money to see this movie. [02 June 1986, p.75]

Jarmusch continues to have a great eye for moody lowlife settings. But his minimalist dramaturgy, so resonant in Stranger Than Paradise, just doesn't give you enough to chew on. His iconoclasm is beginning to look like complacency. It's time this talented filmmaker put more matter in his mannerism. [04 Dec 1989, p.78]

The presence of Connery is pure balm, purring those Celtic tones like smoky single-malt Scotch.

Bustin' Loose has a fair share of laughs, none of which is supplied by Tyson, who is totally wasted in an oppressively upright role and lacks the light touch that might have transformed it into something more quirky. For his first effort as producer, Pryor earns a mixed report. He's given himself a good showcase, but his gifts as a dangerous, subversive comic are undermined by his desire to make Uplifting Statements. [01 June 1981, p.91]

The End initially promises to answer in disturbing comic form, mixing pathos and pratfalls to fashion a pitch-black comedy about a man freaking out on the edge of oblivion. But in the face of such a risky subject, director-star Reynolds and writer Jerry Belson get cold feet. [22 May 1978, p.72]

The movie feels like a half-hour skit blown up, like its stars, to unwieldy proportions. [02 Jul 1984, p.45]

There's an ample sense of foreboding in Last Night -- but sadly, very little else.

Shot in crisp black and white, this homage to "La Dolce Vita" nonetheless lacks the charm and energy of Fellini's farcical original.

Kershner's accomplishment in the first half of RoboCop 2--which offers up the original's mixture of crunching action, dystopian satire and depraved villainy--is the genuine pathos this conflicted tin man evokes. But a curious thing happens to this sequel. It forgets what it's about. In the last third of the movie, the character of RoboCop vanishes behind his visor, the script loses its focus, and the special effects take over.

The failure of Barry Levinson's Toys is of a different order: it's the kind of folly only a very fine filmmaker could make, a labor of misguided love.

There is obviously a good deal of built in human interest in this material. But this movie squanders its most important resource - its people - by employing an all-star cast so huge and unwieldy that nobody is on hand long enough to exert much of an emotional tug. [27 Dec 1976, p.57]

Director Mimi Leder fills the mindless-action-movie quota quite stylishly. The trouble is, The Peacemaker thinks it has a mind.

Rollerball isn't a movie; it's a protest demonstration - producer-director Norman Jewison's feeble complaint about both the increasing brutality in professional sports and the increasing sterility of modern life. Trendy concerns, sure enough, but the movie's only contribution could well be the introduction of its brutal, eponymous game to an already sport-surfeited society. [07 July 1975, p.56]

Just at the point when Alien 3 should kick into high terror gear, it becomes clear that this hushed, somber sequel doesn't know how to deliver the goods. Fincher has style to spare -- and the sets, cinematography and special effects are all first rate -- but the nuts and bolts of storytelling elude him. [1 June 1992, p.73]

Perversely, it is a reverence for langauge - the most exciting aspect of Chandler's novels - that does the movie in. With a face like an old catcher's mitt, a beat-up bulk anesthetized by booze, Mitchum as Marlowe doesn't have to tell us a thing about himself. But tell us he does - in gumshoe-ese that echoes Chandler's language without its hallucinatory sparkle. [18 Aug 1975, p.73]

Aims for a "Princess Bride" mix of whimsy and wonderment, the sardonic and the romantic, with only sporadic success. Both visually and narratively cluttered, the film diverts more than it enchants.

There’s a great, piercing story here, but too often you feel you’re watching it through the wrong end of the telescope.

The fans who have kept John Berendt's nonfiction tale on the best-seller list for more than three years may come away feeling they've seen "Perry Mason" on Valium. [1 December 1997, p.87]

It has a lovely score by Thomas Newman, stunning production design, striking costumes and gorgeous cinematography. Unfortunately, it just doesn't jell.

Enough already with the faux documentary!

There's a quirky, honest movie struggling to emerge from Then She Found Me (April's Jewish heritage is refreshingly portrayed, and there are lovely, scattered moments when the characters surprise you), but Hunt, in her directorial debut, can't seem to decide whether she'd rather make a spicy ethnic dish or bland comfort food.

Robert Redford need not worry that his golden-boy throne is in danger of being usurped by the ballyhooed newcomer Nick Nolte, whose performance here never transcends the boundaries of a Salem commercial...And anyone who can't help looking beyond the action for plausibility had better stay home. You're thinking too much if you can't accept Nolte's explanation for risking life and limb underwater: "I feel things, so I do 'em." And if you persist in wondering why no policeman ever gets curious about all these strange goings-on in sleepy little Bermuda, then you're nothing but a spoilsport. [27 June 1977, p.60]