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.