Survival of the Dead lacks the wit of "Zombieland," the polish and punch of last winter's "The Crazies," a remake of a Romero zombie picture from the '70s.

There's an air of desperation about this movie - a sense that the stars are yearning to do something so patently undemanding that it just can't miss.

Kilmer makes a worthy, if somewhat underscripted villain. And some of the bits -- MacGruber idiotically setting traps that the bad guys never fall for -- tickle. But this still feels instantly dated, a "Hot Rod in a Role Models" era.

Medicine Man is bad medicine - very bad. A parable about mankind's folly, it's also a a prime example of it. [08 Feb 1992, p.E1]

All things considered, Hocus Pocus is much more entertaining than a pimple-people picture has a right to be. In addition to the delightful witches and the delightful Thora Birch, the film's bag of tricks and treats also includes a cat that - thanks to the magic of computer graphics - really seems to talk. [16 July 1993]

The matter-of-fact way everybody involved faces this supernatural horror drains most of the chills right out of it.

Hallstrom and his low-heat stars can’t find the pulse of this corpse.

Bad politics sometimes makes for good movies, and the harsh, politically incorrect truth about Basic Instinct is that it's a tantalizing, suspensefully correct thriller.

But even with Dudley Moore, this movie would probably have fallen flat. At best, Skin Deep is a VCR movie. Rent it when it comes out on tape, fast forward to the best part, and replay the condom scene until you stop laughing.

The movie never convinces us that Forster is convinced himself. The director lines up this bad good man in his sights, but he never quite has the nerve quite to pull the trigger.

This script, this leaden direction ensures that even as the teen wish-fulfillment fantasy, complete with young women playing dress-up, Monte Carlo fails.

The eggshells the screenwriter and director walk on distance the story from the reality it aims to imitate. And that robs this tale of loss, grief and redemption of its punch.

A crowded cast of some of the finest actors in the cinema act the hell out of a gimmicky, episodic, hit-or-miss script in Brooklyn’s Finest, Antoine Fuqua’s latest attempt to relive the glories of "Training Day."

The new big-screen Flipper isn't as lame as that series, which is one of the two nicest things you can say about it. The other is that its aquatic sequences are sometimes quite beautiful, with their views of dolphins and other sea life. [17 May 1996, p.17]

Despite the locations and the informative narrative, almost every scene is missing that spark that would bring the characters to life and immediacy to the story.

Though properly chilling when it’s supposed to be, it’s a film whose effects, script and performances keep it at arm’s length when it is supposed to be moving.

It's a solid, old-fashioned action yarn filled with the very latest dive gear and the oldest plot formula in the movie-maker's playbook.

Half of me thinks that Raising Cain is disappointing. The other half thinks it's just stupid. [07 Aug 1992, p.19]

The earlier film (and much of the television program) worked for adults by creating a youngster's fantasy world with an eerie fidelity. It got us to laugh by reminding us of the child within ourselves. Watching the new film, however, all we're reminded of is that we outgrew kiddie movies a long time ago.

With DiCaprio and Thewlis cast as 19th-century French poets Arthur Rimbaud and Paul Verlaine in Total Eclipse, you'd figure that the new film would almost have to be worth watching -if only for the acting. You would be mistaken. [01 Dec 1995, p.23]

The Lawnmower Man has it all - melodramatic plot, bad acting, special effects that will undoubtedly seem cheesy in about five minutes and even a concluding sequence in which the usual lofty moral is voiced.

Obviously, the premise is pretty implausible, but the moviemakers do a decent job of addressing (if not entirely satifying) our questions about the implausibilities. And the stars, especially Belushi, bring an amazing amount of conviction to this formulaic material. [17 Aug 1990, p.8]

How many times can Michael J. Fox ask his fans to sit through junk before they stop being his fans? [1 Oct 1993, p.22]

Basically a bloody buddy picture that tries too hard.

Moon delivers the popcorn in gigantic fist-fulls of fun.

The ads in this film are so funny that I wish I could report that the production containing them is equally hilarious. But as it turns out, Crazy People is wobbly - a watchable but unremarkable showcase for the exceptional ads.

It moves along briskly and lightly, leaving little trace and doing no serious damage to boomer memories. [22 Aug 1997, p.19]

It's not enough to have the characters act scared and then to throw in a bunch of special effects. It's absolutely essential to creep out the audience, and that's what De Bont neglects to do. [23 July 1999, p.17]

The characters in The Perfect Game speak old school “Hollywood Mexican.” In other words, they speak English with accents that we haven’t heard since the golden Age of Speedy Gonzalez.

Instead of displaying the grim wit of RoboCop, RoboCop 2 is crude and punishing. [23 June 1990, p.E1]

A ten-years-too-late comedy.

The message delivered isn't subtle, with Kendrick delivering toss-away lines that suggest he doesn't even tolerate "the option" of divorce. But the bigger message might be that the Kendricks haven't sold out, "gone Hollywood" or watered down their Baptist beliefs based on efforts to reach an audience beyond the faithful.

A perfectly pleasant but fluffy, inconsequential romantic comedy.

Represents a new low for the form. Watching this one, you may be tempted to throw the baby movie out with the bath water.

Hardware is the best nuclear-radiation twisted-metal jubilee since Mad Max. [05 Oct 1990, p.11]

For an hour or so The Rookie really cooks, and Clint Eastwood is the main reason why. [07 Dec 1990, p.6]

Not only does the new film generally fail to skewer TV's follies, it isn't even as entertaining as television. And I'm not talking about really good television, like Seinfeld and Murphy Brown. I'm talking about the usual stuff, like Three's Company and Mork & Mindy. [17 Aug 1992, p.D2]

Like Home Alone, Career Opportunities is inoffensive, breezy and contains a funny cameo appearance by John Candy. The new film starts out well but falls apart midway because the serviceable situations that Hughes and director Bryan Gordon set up don't much go anywhere.

The slapstick is mild-mannered, there's no romance, not a hint of emotion.

A mad mash-up of sci-fi, Western, sacrilegious silliness and vampire movie. What lifts it to "I've seen worse" status is the previous teaming of star and director Scott Stewart, who last gave us the archangel fighting off other angels fiasco "Legion."

But eventually, the soulless violence and shoddy plotting wear you out. By the end, you'll start to feel like one of the hostages. [17 Jan 1997, p.A2]

LW3 features a lot of violence but not nearly as much as there was in LW2. And Part 3 puts a greater emphasis on the relationships among the characters. [15 May 1992, p.18]

Reducing the racist characters to the level of frothing-at-the-mouth Karate Kid villains doesn't shed much light on a serious social problem. (Louis Malle's portrait of the young Gestapo member in the 1974 Lacombe, Lucien came much closer to exposing the banality of evil.) And Avildsen doesn't make matters any better by staging scenes of racial violence so luridly that they almost amount to a form of exploitation.

Effective as these actors are, it's Chase's breezy performance - with its blend of irony and insouciance - that makes Fletch Lives worth a look. He's what Alan Alda would be if Alda could ever figure out how to adapt his TV persona to the big screen.

The film is a slugger that keeps hitting you with one obvious image after another. Funny thing, though: Obviousness is sometimes effective. If Rocky IV doesn't kill you, it'll conquer you.

In the final analysis, the action-picture mechanics of the film are too limiting. No Mercy barely has a subject, much less a theme. Yet moments from the picture linger in the mind. If you don't leave the theater satisfied, you may at least be moved.

A transgressive blend of stoner comedy, horny teenager movie and "Blair Witch" reality riff, this no-budget romp through teen New Orleans crosses the line and erases that line in a hell-bent pursuit of hell-bound laughs. And yeah, it's often funny as all get out.

The film’s tone is all wrong, the pacing is dead and the veering between sex, sadness and sado-masochistic violence is enough to give you motion sickness. It’s a bad movie.

Club Paradise isn't particularly offensive, but it isn't especially funny, either. And all that's holding it together is Williams' amiable performance and the music, most of which was written by Cliff, who also performs it.

It would be wrong to blame Martin Short alone for the failure of Three Fugitives. Francis Veber, the French filmmaker who wrote and directed the film, must accept much of the responsibility.

Hard as it is to justify Bond films on intellectual grounds, there's something invigorating -- and strangely reassuring -- about this sort of picture. It is comforting to feel that should a psychopath threaten the stability of the world, our hero will be ready to wipe the grin off his face and shove him into San Francisco Bay.

An ultimately unsatisfying allegory about war and whimsy, the new film has its attractions, but it's certainly no Aladdin. [18 Dec 1992, p.19]

If I had to guess, I'd say that the big white "snow" thing is a flimsy combination of cheap plaster, recycled Styrofoam and some poor soul's false hopes. Pretty much like the movie itself. [11 Dec 1998, p.22]

A Kiss Before Dying is low-level trash that works. It's far from ambitious, and even considered within the cheap-thriller category, this movie is nothing to make a fuss about. And yet the production is perfectly watchable. [03 May 1991, p.6]

Witty, warm, well-cast and often wickedly funny.

Well, Green Lantern isn't "Jonah Hex" bad. But it's silly enough to be part of the same "silliest Warner Brothers comic book summer movies of all time" conversation.

The trouble with The Change-Up is that it doesn't change-up enough of the formula to render this new.

What's unusual about Consenting Adults (which opens today) is that virtually everything is implausible. In fact, my bull detector hasn't beeped so much since the last time I went shopping for a new car. If I were to list everything that happens in the film that strains credulity, I'd be here until Woody and Mia get back together. Plus I'd make some of you angry by revealing too many secrets. [16 Oct 1992, p.19]

For all the impressive (but not dazzling) effects, the scattered jokes and stentorian acting (especially from the Olympians), there’s not much here that will stick with you after the popcorn’s gone. But as any ancient Greek could tell you, that’s sort of the point.

A violent, clumsy, jokey, badly-plotted and miscast mess.

Woman of Straw, which was by no means a sparkling production or masterful mystery-thriller, did verge on Hitchcock territory. [30 Nov 2003, p.9]

As uneven as it is, Life as We Know It still goes down like comic comfort food, especially for anybody who's ever dealt with parenthood.

Watching The Bodyguard is like trying to have a telephone conversation when you have a bad connection. The guy on the other end keeps saying things that sound maddeningly incomplete....After a while, you want to hang up.

The script, by actor turned writer John Posey, has structural problems and motivational issues in between the cliches. And Cena, a few movies into his career, is still all presence and no acting.

In Sister Act 2, these energized musical numbers and the sparkling comedy work together in ways that are very hard to resist. And considering how terribly resistible (to me, at least) last year's Sister Act was, the sequel seems like a movie miracle. [10 Dec 1993]

A broad and formulaic culture-clash comedy built on fill-in-the-blank wedding comedy clichés.

Only Hopkins, readily referencing his bag of tricks, seems to get what to make of this "inspired by trues events (and a book by Matt Baglio)" hooey.

And for a while, anyway, the filmmakers capitalize on this irresistible premise, winning our complicity in their thriller's voyeuristic game with slick visuals and a delicious mood of anticipation. [22 May 1993, p.E1]

She (Parker) looks exhausted, first scene to last, and that fatigue spills off the screen onto us.

Navy Seals stands out among this summer's violence-oriented pictures as the only one that doesn't leave your brain feeling like mashed potatoes. There are plenty of exploding bombs in this picture, not to mention various other forms of destruction...But the action is orchestrated so sensitively that it's both aesthetically satisfying and emotionally resonant. There's a texture to the violence in Navy Seals that's completely absent in this summer's kaboom cartoons.

You would call Amos & Andrew a comedy of errors if it were actually funny. I suppose the precise term is an attempted comedy of errors - or maybe just a turkey. [05 Mar 1993, p.19]

If you get stuck at Striptease, my advice is to relax and try to enjoy its occasional pleasures.

It's a humorless movie of morphing zombies (they take on beastly attributes), phoned-in performances and trite dialogue.

A mild-mannered kids' comedy that makes for a pleasant-enough time killer.

The script piles the preposterous on top of the absurd and the film's thin charms dissipate, revealing the creaking movie star contraption underneath.

Lacks surprises.

The movie's central gimmick isn't enough, and when more supernatural twists that don't play by the movie's own fantasy rules kick in, it lost me.

Nobody has much that's funny to say or cool to do. Even the spy gadgets are lame.

It's a film of noble sacrifice and "good deaths" but surprisingly few chuckles.

Drive-In Academy Award nominations for Alex Vincent, the same kid from the first movie, for attacking Chucky with an electric carving knife; Christine Elise, as Andy's big foster sister, for pitching Chucky through a station-wagon windshield; Don Mancini, the writer, and John Lafia, the director, for having Chucky use a cellular phone and saying, "Now it's time to play Hide the soul." [30 Nov 1990, p.7]

The Double is barely half the movie it had the potential of becoming.

Cutthroat Island isn't so much a movie as it is a burial at sea. As a longtime Geena Davis fan, I hope she won't go down with the ship. [22 Dec 1995, p.M10]

Color me dissatisfied with Color of Night. For starters, it's a murder mystery with a really obvious solution. How obvious? It's so embarrassingly obvious that even I figured it out - and I can never figure these things out.

That Disney touch (which even Disney has trouble replicating) is missing. Even the hockey is unconvincing.

This Arthur is on the rocks long before Last Call.

Nominally a romantic action-comedy, this Goldie Hawn-Mel Gibson picture is actually a mind-numbingly raucous exploitation flick with occasional bad jokes and mild sex scenes. [18 May 1990, p.21]

In Under the Cherry Moon, the self-styled auteur is obviously aiming for a romantic tragedy with occasional lighthearted moments. What he ends up with, however, is purest camp.

It's all very messy and entirely too obvious at the same time. Montiel makes the most of his settings, but the story keeps staggering into dead ends.

The most mortifying way for a rock star to mess up is for him to direct the dumb movies he stars in. This is the Prince Method. [09 Nov 1990]

A screen romance that echoes its title. It gets by. Barely.

All things considered, Pure Luck exists somewhere in that vast middle ground of the cinema - the not-badlands. Watching this film won't make you feel as if you've won the lottery, but at least you won't feel like your pen is leaking. [09 Aug 1991, p.8]

Take away much of the myth, most of the sorcery and all of the humor of the 1982 John Milius-Arnold Schwarzenegger version of the sword and sorcery epic "Conan the Barbarian" and you've got an idea what the new "Conan" is like.

This souped-up exploitation flick is a little like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid - if Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid had been set in the near future (1996) and produced by morons. [23 Aug 1991, p.6]

As with any movie, this kids' film is only as good as its writing - the jokes, the cute bits, the heart. And that's where Alpha and Omega comes up short.

Brit hunk Alex Pettyfer has grown into a solid and quite interesting lead to build this potential sci-fi movie series around.

This is ugly. [20 Sept 1993, p.D2]

Thank heavens Krasinski, at least, had the screenwriter's ear. He makes every one-liner land. "The Hamptons are like a zombie movie directed by Ralph Lauren."

The formulaic plot does not give the actors that much to work with. Swank, though, does a good job as Julie. [16 Sep 1994, p.2]