I am not going to try to tell you that this one-joke, talking-horse comedy is, in any meaningful sense, a good movie. What I am going to say is that it's a little better than my rock-bottom expectations led me to predict.

This PG-rated romp is bland bananas compared to its R-rated predecessor. Besides, immediately following the liberating craziness of Animal House, another slob comedy didn't seem like such a bad idea. Now, after nearly a decade of slob comedies, the last thing we need is yet another, tamer one.

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.

The setup isn't exactly what you'd call plausible, but the follow-through is consistent and clever.

The film's flaws are at least as obvious as its strengths. But LaLoggia knows something of childhood's secrets, and has managed to get what he knows on the screen.

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

As it turns out, the three men in Three Men and a Baby haven't got a clue about diapers -- or bottles or formula or anything concerning babies. They're bachelors -- New York yuppies -- who share a fantastic (and, undoubtedly, astronomically priced) apartment in Manhattan. How the lives of the threesome are changed by the new arrival is the crux of this good-natured comedy.

This modern-day vampire movie is, to be sure, no masterpiece, but its suggestive narrative and dreamlike visual style are distinct improvements over those of such recent living-dead flicks as The Lost Boys and Vamp. And if Near Dark doesn't provide a complete answer to the ''necking'' question it raises, well, heck, it's an exploitation film, not an advice column.

The movie works the way Westerns have always worked: In clear, simple terms and with straightforward dramatic devices.

The Big Easy is as atmospheric as they come, but -- surprise! -- it's also sharp and swift. Plus, it has ample amounts of chemistry -- the steamy, sexy kind.

A thriller that grabs you even before the ironies of its plot kick in is a thriller you don't want to miss. No Way Out is that sort of movie, a thriller that's thrilling throughout.

Dalton shows a serious side that's been missing from the role since Sean Connery's earliest 007 days.

Superman IV is cinematic kryptonite. Not only could it kill the Superman series, it might also leave filmgoers feeling weak.

Abetter title for Jaws The Revenge would be Jaws The Refund. A refund is what a lot of people who go to see this picture will demand. This Time It's Personal, the tag line for the new film's ad campaign, doesn't seem quite right either. This Time It's Terrible would have been more accurate.

Crude, adolescent and not very funny.

One triumph of The Untouchables is the way its operatic style accommodates larger-than-life performances.

The triumph of this bleak, unsettling picture is that, no matter how grim it gets, it's far too involving for you to turn away.

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.

Sid & Nancy is an honorable try, but it could have been better had Cox found a way to imbue the movie with some of the sheer zaniness of his Repo Man.

Paul Newman could win an Oscar for his strong, complex performance in The Color of Money. His Eddie Felson, so quick-witted and seemingly imperturbable in the early scenes, eventually drops his foxy pose to reveal some of the raw vulnerability of his Hustler days.

There's another, more important reason why Stand By Me isn't for kids. Its perspective is that of a knowing adult, which is to say that though the film is frequently affectionate and funny, it contains a drop too much condescension to be entirely successful.

Backhanded compliments are pretty much the only ones The Boy Who Could Fly deserves. The subjects, here, are childhood and illness: topics that otherwise tough-minded people are inclined to approach with uncharacteristic sentimentality. But though the film is both sappy and cliched, it's not as sappy or cliched as might be expected. All things considered, it could have been a lot worse.

In Howard the Duck, the special effects -- and the Muppety duck jokes -- command so much attention that it's easy to overlook the movie makers' clever narrative touches. It's rather fitting, for example, that Howard is shown to be almost as much of a misfit on the duck world as he is on Earth. And there's a sometimes-touching, sometimes-hilarious Fay Wray-King Kong relationship established between Howard and a sexy, baby-faced rock singer named Beverly (Lea Thompson). The main reason the relationship is so intriguing is that Thompson always keeps you guessing about her character's true feelings for the cantankerous bird. It's hard to fault the tongue-in-bill high spirits of a movie like Howard the Duck.

There's no mistaking Flight of the Navigator for a really first-rate children's picture like, say, The Black Stallion. But Flight of the Navigator is an enjoyable film that encourages kids to use their heads. Unlike those children's movies that spoon-feed their audiences, this film keeps setting up challenging situations that young moviegoers must think through.

Aliens is one of the most intensely shocking films to open in ages: Even if you think you've got the stamina for cinematic suspense, you may find yourself out in the lobby, midway, catching your breath. This film is also the best monster movie of the year and the best picture of any kind to open so far this summer. Put it another way: Aliens is the Jaws of the '80s.

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.

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.

The idea behind Ruthless People is just about irresistible. Much of the fun of this comedy is in watching what happens as virtually everyone in the movie tries to double-cross or otherwise take advantage of everyone else.

Director Ivan Reitman isn't an especially careful moviemaker, though this latest film is structurally superior to such previous efforts as Ghostbusters, Stripes and Meatballs. He's still got a lot to learn about giving dramatic points the proper weight, and his visual sense is shaky. But for all his shortcomings, Reitman seems to have something that other, more elegant directors lack: the ability to get stars to go a little crazy. The enjoyment we get from the goofy performances in his movies is something rather rare.

The most jarring casting mistake (even more jarring than the miscasting of Dangerfield) involves Keith Gordon, who plays Thornton's son. Gordon, who has shown himself to be an intense and quirky actor in such films as Christine and Dressed to Kill, is a smoldering presence in what ought to be a light, comic role. His psycho-killer eyes just don't fit here.

A simple equation, perhaps, but when it comes to comedy, simpler is frequently funnier. This formula has already worked beautifully in France, where the movie has broken all box-office records and has won three Cesars (the French equivalent of the Oscar) including one for best picture.

Movie could use a little of the tight plotting and clarity that made The Hit so effective. But perhaps the new film's diffuse nature is the price of its ambitiousness. Besides, in many ways My Beautiful Laundrette is a beauty.

A typical mad slasher movie, except the slashers are not mad, not even human. They are robots that were supposed to provide security at a shopping mall. But, as usual, their targets are a group of brainless teen-agers. [01 Aug 1991, p.I1]

There probably isn't anyone working in movies today who could have done more with this material than writer-director Paul Mazursky does. In Down and Out, he finds humor in those contemporary issues about which most people haven't quite resolved their feelings. This can lead him into dangerous territory: AIDS, anorexia, homosexuality and even "We Are the World" all figure in Down and Out's unusual comedy. [21 Nov 1999, p.60]

Director Michael Chapman, an experienced cinematographer, is skilled in conveying ideas through pictures -- quite an advantage in a movie about people who aren't especially verbal. And Chapman's cinematographer, Jan De Bont, has a varied palette that responds to the visual demands of a world in transition.

Quite simply, Ran is a great, nightmarish motion picture.

This good and gentle film, directed by Sydney Pollack (Tootsie), might have been fashioned to make the most of Streep's natural qualities of independence, humor and sophistication (bordering on snobbishness) and her exciting suggestion of untrustworthiness.

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.

Betsy needs a couple more pounds of makeup to get this more than two stars. Joe Bob says check it out anyway.

The biggest fault of Jagged Edge is that whatever suspense it manages to generate in its climactic scenes is achieved artificially, through tricky editing and manipulative "danger" music. The mystery of the murder -- which should be generating the suspense -- is so transparent that I wasn't anywhere near the edge of my seat.

The director keeps the pacing brisk, and if he doesn't make as emotional a picture as someone else might have, The Journey of Natty Gann has a quiet dignity.

The movie contains Jane Fonda's first big-screen appearance since On Golden Pond (1981); if she doesn't quite find a character in Martha, she is nonetheless riveting. Anne Bancroft, too, is impressive. Finally, though, it is Meg Tilly who makes the movie live. Her performance, which works on both realistic and symbolic levels, allows you to believe in the story.

Ever since Charles Durning played the governor of Texas in Best Little Whorehouse and danced around the rotunda in a tutu, I've thought he might be my kinda guy. Now he's proved it in Stand Alone, or "Death Wish for Grandpas," the best movie ever made about Medicare patients that decide to bayonet all the South American cocaine dealers in town.

Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome isn't a bad movie. It has entertaining sections, decent performances and more than a few provocative images. But it also has a major shortcoming: It's too darned sane.

This brilliant contraption of a film could become the hit of the summer. It's a cinematic Rube Goldberg machine whose parts connect in audacious, witty ways. [04 July 1985, p.E.1]

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.

Gasp! And you thought Scream was predictable. [26 Dec 1997, p.11]

Screenwriter William Goldman's excellent craftsmanship made what could have been an insular political saga into a captivating detective story, earning him an Academy Award. And director Alan Pakula, relying on director Costa-Gavra's 1969 political thriller Z as his inspiration, created an absorbing study of the criminal arrogance that power can incite. [01 Dec 2002, p.9]

Tyson rose to the challenges of this demanding role with perceptive, luminous work. It remains the peak of her long, distinguished career. [22 Feb 2009, p.10]

Working from Blatty's own screenplay, director William Friedkin sets his own unhurried pace. That pace, at times, does seem a tad glacial, and that is the film's biggest failing. But unlike so many horror flicks that followed, this one really is about something. It's about several things, actually: coming of age and letting go, mainly, as well as getting sick and growing old. [2000 re-release]

Frenzy, which was Hitchcock's 54th and next-to-last film, displayed a macabre sense of humor, playful use of film techniques and edge-of-the-seat suspense. [27 Feb 2000, p.60]

It is certainly one of the best westerns ever made, and the best film of any kind to come out in 1969.

If it's explosions, gunplay and wartime treachery that you're looking for, then director Brian Hutton's Where Eagles Dare is right up your alley. [12 Mar 1995, p.51]

Tony Curtis does a remarkable portrayal of De Salvo, while Henry Fonda is outstanding as the principal criminal investigator, John S. Bottomley, who must work with few clues. [17 Feb 2002, p.9]

A film taut with cold-war tensions and cloak-and-dagger secrecy. [23 May 2004, p.8]

An uproarious piece of fluff about a turn-of-the-century New York-to-Paris automobile race complete with a noble hero, a snarling villain and a spirited suffragette. The Great Race, while not in a league with Some Like It Hot, is deftly directed by Blake Edwards. [02 Apr 1995, p.75]

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]

Poitier's performance and Nelson's low-key direction carried this delightful vehicle, adapted to the screen by James Poe from William E. Barrett's eloquent novel. [14 Jan 2001, p.17]

A mad compound of naturalism, surrealism, farce and philosophy. [07 Jul 1996, p.65]

Exodus, a marathon undertaking by producer/director Otto Preminger, is among film epics such as Quo Vadis, War and Peace, Ben-Hur, Lawrence of Arabia and Spartacus that were churned out during the 1950s and '60s. [05 Apr 1992, p.55]

A beautifully photographed, sentimental film about a family of itinerant Australian sheepherders who travel from job to job during the 1920s.

Considered to be producer-director Stanley Kramer's most powerful film, containing his strongest message, a stern examination of the last days of mankind. [21 Mar 2004, p.8]

A superb character study of the residents of an English seaside hotel. [17 Oct 1999, p.56]

The Big Country is a sprawling western that is handsomely photographed by Franz Planer and meticulously directed by William Wyler. [02 Oct 1994, p.51]

An intense drama of 12 harrowing hours in the life of a voracious Southern family in conflict. [10 June 1990, p.4]

The Fly...will send cold chills down the spines of the most hardened horror addict. It's a dilly. [29 Aug 1958, p.9D]

The real force of Vertigo, though, comes from Hitchcock's intimate depiction of perversity. Seldom has obsession stood so nakedly revealed. [Restored version; 15 Nov 1996, p.20]

A suspenseful, near-forgotten gem about a captured loyal Luftwaffe pilot, Franz Von Werra (Hardy Kruger), who is obsessed with escape. [05 Jun 1994, p.F1]

The film's fascination is primarily a result of Woodward's crafty, painstaking depiction of the three personalities stemming from the same woman. [09 Nov 2003, p.9]

Director Leo McCarey's An Affair to Remember (1957) was - and always will be - a poignant romantic fairy tale elevated above the typical studio tear-jerker. This is because of the performances turned in by Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr, and outstanding production values. [17 Apr 1994, p.71]

Marty will give you a heartening slice of life, full of honesty and humor. [24 Oct 1955, p.7]

Grimly realistic. [25 Feb 2001, p.17]

The 1951 sci-fi classic set the standard for a wave of films examining the Eisenhower era's end-of-the-world paranoia and humanity's newfound power to obliterate itself. [07 Mar 2003, p.40]

The Asphalt Jungle is considered to be director John Huston's most brilliant and realistic crime drama. [10 May 1998, p.67]

James Cagney gives an electrifying performance as a psychotic and paranoiac mama’s boy in White Heat. The 1949 film is undoubtedly one of the most terrifying and violent crime films ever made.

The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer is a delightful comedy about a playboy artist who is ordered to escort a judge's impressionable teen-age sister everywhere. [16 Jan 1990, p.4]

A vivid and harrowingly exciting melodrama. [05 Oct 1997]

The Yearling, based on Florida author Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings novel, is one of the best depictions of American rural life that Hollywood has ever produced. [12 July 1998, p.60]

This may be a dated film, one in which publishing companies were run by czars instead of corporations and a woman's worth was defined by mink coats and men. But it is also a smart, clever, funny film with a wonderful cast and some nice screwball touches by director PETER GODFREY. [23 Dec 2001, p.15]

Objective Burma!, which is directed strikingly by Raoul Walsh and has a documentary aura to it, is one of the finest and most realistic World War II dramas made during the war. [25 Oct 1992, p.61]

The first masterpiece of Hollywood's golden age of musicals. [22 Dec 1996, p.63]

A stirring account of the submarine Copperfin's daring mission to penetrate Tokyo Bay to help set up the raid. The film was convincing enough to be used as a Navy instructional film. [31 May 2001, p.F1]

Watch on the Rhine, Lillian Hellman's stark and gripping play about Nazi indoctrination, was translated to film in 1943 with accuracy and depth. [26 Sep 1993, p.71]

Shadow of a Doubt is considered to be director Alfred Hitchcock's best American film. Hitchcock himself regarded it so. [02 Aug 1998, p.60]

It certainly ranks as one of director John Ford's finest efforts in a long string of outstanding human dramas the director made during the late 1930s and early 1940s. [19 May 1996, p.57]

To fully appreciate Fantasia, it's best not to think of the animated sequences as visual adaptations of the music. Instead, think of the music as accompanying the images. [01 Nov 1991, p.28]

During the 1930s, James Cagney and Humphrey Bogart were masters of the gangster role. They made three films together. Two of them, Angels With Dirty Faces (1938) and The Roaring Twenties (1939), were among the best gangster epics of the decade. [05 Jan 1997, p.48]

The 1937 movie excels with outstanding performances by child star Freddie Bartholomew and Spencer Tracy. [20 Jun 1999, p.56]

Green Pastures, told with gentle humor, gives more meaning to biblical stories than most holier-than-thou entries. [23 Feb 2003, p.9]

Flynn's combination of lithe, animal grace, clear-eyed youthfulness, pure English-speaking voice and athletic prowess is irresistible. [01 Nov 1998, p.68]

Probably the greatest, wittiest and most eccentric of all classic horror films. [13 Feb 2000, p.F1]

This 1935 adaptation flourishes because of a tasty, idiosyncratic cast (W.C. Fields, Basil Rathbone, Lionel Barrymore) that nicely matches up with Dickens' characterizations, and because of the assured production and direction of David O. Selznick and George Cukor, both at the top of their respective games. [02 Feb 1992, p.G1]

A classic of aggressive nonsense. Also, there is something tighter about Duck Soup as compared with their later efforts. It isn't just the absence of an extraneous love story, or the fact that Harpo doesn't play the harp and Chico doesn't "shoot the keys." Nor is it that much of the comedy crosses the magic line from parody into satire. It's a glistening patina of whimsy that rushes through the work, a heightened effervescence. In addition, the film is only 68 minutes long. [16 Dec 2001, p.16]

Noel Coward's Cavalcade, a rich nostalgic look at a vanished way of life, vividly details the period through the travails of an upper and a lower class family between New Year's Eve 1899 and New Year's Eve 1932. [09 Mar 2003, p.9]

The first, and perhaps the best, of five Clark Gable-Jean Harlow vehicles. [08 Feb 1998, p.67]

Style always outweighed substance in the atmospheric films of Josef von Sternberg, and this 1932 feature is no exception. [26 Nov 1993, p.32]