This sequel lacks the zany spark that energized the first movie although the new film is often amusing and its narrative is more streamlined.

Looking around, you realize that only so much is possible in this town. Fortunately, the limited range of possibilities includes a film like Gas, Food, Lodging. [8 Jan 1993]

Prelude to a Kiss is a kind of fairy tale, but it's a fairy tale grounded in human experience. [10 Jul 1992, p.10]

This superficially engaging movie leads you to expect something more - something that would suggest how the experience of playing professional ball changed the lives of the women in the league, and how the league itself may have helped to alter the general public's notions of women and sports.

But weird as that is - and as insensitive as the studio's decision about the film's release date may be - the big question for most people is whether Unlawful Entry is a good movie. I think it isn't - not because the film exploits the Rodney King incident specifically, but because it is so exploitative generally. [27 June 1992, p.E1]

Like the hero himself, the movie is larger than life - a horrific fantasy that gets carried away with itself as the mood builds and the tension mounts

One great thing about the script for Housesitter - the new Steve Martin-Goldie Hawn screwball comedy - is that it takes the romanticism of shared dream-spinning and turns it into a sustaining comic device. The other great thing about the script is that it's beautifully structured. [12 June 1992, p.19]

Goldberg's performance does have its moments, especially once she gets past the frenzy of the movie's first half. But like such accomplished fellow cast members as Maggie Smith and Harvey Keitel, Whoopi is wasted in this godawful nunsense. [29 May 1992, p.17]

The movie's biggest sin, however, is that during its crucial final half-hour, the action is shot in a confusing way that renders it virtually incomprehensible. This section is almost a series of random images, which is no way to build suspense, let me tell you. That this movie's director has previously specialized in music videos and that he has never before directed a feature film, may explain why this section is so very chaotic. [22 May 1992, p.19]

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]

Director Carl Franklin takes a simple premise and treats it so straightforwardly that the result is jarring - at times, even powerful.

Working from a script she wrote with producer Andy Ruben, director Katt Shea gets some sexy vibes going, and the atmospherically lit production has an unexpected visual distinction.

If Larry Fishburne is like a Clint Eastwood who can act better, the new film is like a Dirty Harry movie done right. [17 Apr 1992, p.20]

Although FernGully is no Little Mermaid, it moves along nicely, and the ecological message generally stays out of the way of the action. [10 Apr 1992, p.24]

White Men Can't Jump isn't a terrific movie, but it's the best showcase Snipes has had so far to demonstrate how hip he can be.

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.

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.

Noisy and (nearly) awful, Noises Off is the sort of movie that gives filmed theater a bad name. Based on Michael Frayn's popular, Tony-nominated play, the screen version is so lame that even without having seen a stage production of the material I can tell that the film doesn't do it justice.

My Cousin Vinny is a hoot.

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.

Memoirs of an Invisible Man had all the right elements to become Chevy Chase's equivalent of Steve Martin's wonderful Roxanne (including the winsome Daryl Hannah), which was also about a form of alienation. But Chase's movie ends up being merely pleasant. [28 Feb 1992, p.17]

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]

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.

If some of the ingredients in this "masala" aren't exactly first-rate, it is spicy enough to recommend. [28 Feb 1992, p.20]

At its best, Fried Green Tomatoes is a pleasantly nostalgic tale wrapped around a murder mystery (which, frankly, isn't all that mysterious). The filmmakers do a decent job of weaving the texture of the thoroughly racist and sexist society within which Idgie, Ruth and the movie's major black characters (played by Cicely Tyson and Stan Shaw) must struggle to preserve their self-respect and, at critical times, their lives. At its worst, the film is unexciting and rambles too much.

It's a fairly intriguing (and, surprisingly non-exploitative) premise, but director/co-writer Ernest R. Dickerson is lost when it comes to devising situations that would suggest what goes on inside his characters' heads. These people are all exactly what they appear to be on the surface, which isn't very involving. [17 Jan 1992, p.20]

The filmmakers should be praised for injecting a stark, sense-quickening drama into the current movie scene. Just say yes to this Rush. [13 Jan 1992, p.B1]

Emilio Estevez (Stakeout, the Young Guns movies) isn't exactly Michael J. Fox, but he qualifies as a sympathetic hero, and Rene Russo (Major League) is fine - if a bit bland - as his girlfriend. Besides, the real fun is in the supporting cast. Mick Jagger plays a sort of bounty hunter, and although he has only about 2 1/2 expressions, they're good ones. Jerry Hall, who appears very briefly, plays a newswoman with only one expression: You've seen it before, and it is plenty. [21 Jan 1982, p.D1]