Philadelphia Inquirer's Scores

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For 4,176 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 70% higher than the average critic
  • 3% same as the average critic
  • 27% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 3.2 points higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Movie review score: 68
Highest review score: 100 Hell or High Water
Lowest review score: 0 The Mangler
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 3,145 out of 4176
  2. Mixed: 682 out of 4176
  3. Negative: 349 out of 4176
4176 movie reviews
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  1. TRON: Legacy
    Legacy is a two-hour light show with a lot of flash, a little style, and not one byte of narrative originality.
  2. First Daughter
    Is there a limit to this incessant princessitude?
  3. Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps
    The film whipsaws between hyperbolic character study and preachy account of the recent financial meltdown. The two story lines are not well-integrated.
  4. Random Hearts
    Sorely needs the injection of skepticism - a quality that would have been even more useful when Pollack was mulling over doing Random Hearts in the first place.
  5. Wedding Palace
    Love conquers all. Sadly, Yoo's film does not.
  6. Welcome to the Rileys
    Flat and predictable.
  7. My One and Only
    It is diverting but insubstantial.
  8. Devil's Knot
    The writer-director has the talent to dig deep and lay bare the assumptions behind our idea of justice and our notions of right and wrong. In The Devil's Knot, he settles for an encyclopedic, if skin-deep, presentation.
  9. Must Love Dogs
    Individually, the actors are endearing. But together in this charmless Gary David Goldberg sitcomedy, inspired by the Claire Cook novel, they are as oddly paired as chalk and cheese.
  10. Rendition
    One reason to see Rendition is for Naor's stunning performance as the torturer who is the one character aware of the political and moral contradictions of what he's doing. Every time he was on screen, he commanded it.
  11. Fluke
    An astoundingly humorless, sentimental meditation on the magic wheel of life, this oddball endeavor - clearly invested with a lot of passion - is too dark for children and too dopey for adults. [02 Jun 1995, p.05]
    • Philadelphia Inquirer
  12. 30 Minutes or Less
    Eisenberg (who starred in director Fleischer's far better Zombieland) does his usual Eisenbergian thing, more slacker and less hacker, but still hitting the same notes. And Ansari squawks and yelps, like a parrot with a grudge.
  13. Strange Days
    Funny things, images. While to depict something visually is not necessarily to endorse it, when Bigelow shows rape as she does in Strange Days, she does so from the rapist's point of view. It's kind of like making a movie about the dangers of the atom bomb that glamorizes the aesthetic beauty of the mushroom cloud. [13 Oct 1995, p.05]
    • Philadelphia Inquirer
  14. Gangs of New York
    An elaborately worked-over opus that's as tarted-up and artificial as Scorsese's '70s classic Mean Streets was gritty and real, Gangs of New York feels like a movie musical without the songs.
  15. Little Fockers
    The million-dollar cast doesn't make the vulgar penny-ante jokes any funnier.
  16. Two Weeks Notice
    Two Weeks Notice is a lot like Trump's tonsorial tower: improbable and overteased.
  17. The Adjustment Bureau
    A movie where the action scenes feel like filler, the romantic leads have little magnetism, and, before long, its metaphysical underpinnings fall to pieces.
  18. The Change-Up
    Like the kids in detention, The Change-Up wants to offend your sensibilities. It sets new records for scatological humor and profanity.
  19. Shadowboxer
    A strident and shocking jumble, Shadowboxer suggests what you might come up with if you decided to inject John Huston's dark 1985 film, "Prizzi's Honor," with Oedipal overtones.
  20. Trapped in Paradise
    As slapstick, it is painfully slow, so much so that one can see every overstretched rubber band and frayed shoelace keeping the film barely together. [02 Dec 1994, p.03]
    • Philadelphia Inquirer
  21. The Legend of Bagger Vance
    A knuckleheaded period piece.
  22. Scary Movie 4
    Shaquille O'Neal and Dr. Phil open Scary Movie 4 with an achingly unfunny couple of minutes of severed limbs and errant hoop shots.
  23. The Four Feathers
    The good news is that it sees what a jihad looks like from both sides. The bad news is that it's not a very good movie, with three fine performances and two great sequences.
  24. 40 Days and 40 Nights
    It's rare that a movie is so graceful and so gross.
  25. The Mechanic
    It'd be nice if Jason Statham and Ben Foster, The Mechanic's mentor/protege duo, could crack a smile. Once.
  26. The Devil's Double
    This is a straight-up gangsta film, yo. Spare us the phony redemption.
  27. Final Destination 5
    Director Steven Quale is economical: He ditches plot altogether, delivering instead nothing but set pieces. He does come up with a few genuinely creepy moments of Hitchcockian edge-of-your-seat suspense and a few very inventive deaths.
  28. Apres Vous (After You)
    Salvadori's choppy film never establishes a comic rhythm.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The We and the I
    It's a fun ride for the most part, with a bumping soundtrack and genuine moments of warmth and heartbreak. But one can't help but wish Gondry had simply let the camera roll, and let the kids speak for themselves.
  30. Your Highness
    Half-baked, both in plot and execution, this spoof's for adolescent boys who find Minotaur private parts amusing and Queen Amidala in a chastity belt sexy.
  31. Bobby
    Bobby has its heart in the right place (on its sleeve). But it doesn't have its screenplay anywhere - or at least, anywhere near the heft that its subject demands.
  32. The Hero of Color City
    A weak "Toy Story"-esque animated film for preschool kids made with little imagination, little art, and even less soul.
  33. Get Smart
    All that's missing is the spirit and the anarchic humor of the sitcom created by Mel Brooks and Buck Henry. The result is an overdressed, carefully stitched scarecrow of a comedy.
  34. Love Happens
    Love Happens announces itself as a romantic comedy but doesn't speak the language of love. Instead, it trades in the slogans of self-help procedural.
  35. Just Go with It
    Sandler, shambling and smirky, delivers another of those one-take performances of his - likable and lazy, forever on the verge of cracking himself up.
  36. Entourage
    Let sleeping bros lie.
  37. Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer
    The closest FF:ROTSS gets to wit is when Johnny convinces a reluctant Reed to attend a bachelor party, after promising the uptight groom-to-be that there won't be any "exotic dancers."
  38. Gnomeo and Juliet
    It's a sorry spectacle, watching garden gnomes being robbed of their dignity.
  39. Home on the Range
    Despite lovely songs from k.d. lang and Bonnie Raitt (written by Beauty and the Beast composer Alan Menken), this range is about as serene as a hen party.
  40. Town & Country
    The humor here is overcooked to the point of limpness.
    • Philadelphia Inquirer
    • 47 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Bittersweet Motel
    It falls short of its tie-dye target.
    • Philadelphia Inquirer
  42. 2016: Obama's America
    Obama, it is implied, is deliberately making America more vulnerable to attack from Muslim extremists. No mention is made of the fact that it was under Obama's watch that Osama bin Laden was killed.
  43. Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa
    Take the flat tire that was "Madagascar." Retread it with "The Lion King" storyline. Pump it up with air. Now you have Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa.
  44. Playing by Heart
    Jaw-droppingly corny. [22 Jan 1999, p.03]
    • Philadelphia Inquirer
  45. My Fellow Americans
    Surely there is a good comedy to be framed around that strange limbo of powerless celebrity we reserve for our ex-presidents. My Fellow Americans merely proves that it has yet to be made. [20 Dec 1996, p.45]
    • Philadelphia Inquirer
  46. Welcome Home, Roscoe Jenkins
    As Roscoe's parents, Margaret Avery and James Earl Jones emerge with drawers undropped and dignity intact.
  47. Don't Move
    Castellitto directed and stars in this unbearable film, a case study of a surgeon with a raging madonna-whore complex.
  48. Mr. Magoo
    The jokes are framed by a silly plot about a missing jewel - a prize sought by assorted thieves and law enforcement types and unwittingly protected by Magoo. Of course, Nielsen saves the day, but there's no way he can save the movie.
    • Philadelphia Inquirer
  49. The Battle of Shaker Heights
    If that sounds a lot like Rushmore, it is, except that the heart has been sucked out of the thing -- replaced by glib chatter, gratuitous Baudelaire references, and distracting product placement.
  50. 300
    300 is "Gladiator" for the gamer set.
  51. The Punisher
    For such a formulaic vigilante film, The Punisher has a far better cast than it deserves.
  52. Are We There Yet?
    This is not the plot of your typical Ice Cube movie. It does, however, combine the plots of at least three John Hughes movies.
  53. Daylight
    A disaster of a disaster movie that veers from the parodic to the preposterous. [6 Dec 1996, p.03]
    • Philadelphia Inquirer
  54. Three to Tango
    Perry and Campbell are charming despite this straitjacket plot.
  55. Crush
    Despite some jaunty performances and its pretty Cotswolds locale, the film, in the end, is hardly a pleasure at all.
  56. W.E.
    Madonna the director deserves a script better than the one Madonna the screenwriter handed off to her. The movie is full of incidents that don't quite cohere into a story - kind of like a Power Point presentation without a throughline.
  57. Get Hard
    The germ of an interesting idea in Get Hard is completely overshadowed by the onslaught of jokes meant to be boundary-pushing and edgy.
  58. Lakeview Terrace
    Lakeview Terrace's pretense at exploring racial intolerance has been exposed for what it really is: a B-movie copout.
  59. Easy Virtue
    Full of forced jocularity and drawing-room hissy fits, with its cast parading around in vintage threads and antique cars, Easy Virtue is a close-to-insufferable souffle based on the 1925 Noel Coward play.
  60. Enduring Love
    Filmmaker Roger Michell doesn't so much adapt Ian McEwan's fine novel Enduring Love, a surgically precise anatomy of romance and obsession, as eviscerate it and wave its entrails before the audience.
  61. Taking Lives
    If Taking Lives starts off with a modicum of wit and creepy-crawly scares, it winds up somewhere else altogether: in the cliche-strewn land of preposterous red herrings.
  62. Head in the Clouds
    Catastrophically overdone.
  63. The Bachelor
    Feeble and formulaic.
    • Philadelphia Inquirer
  64. Analyze That
    This is a movie that both parodies "The Sopranos" and aspires to its mordant humor. I don't think anyone -- not Tony Soprano, not Paul Vitti -- can have it both ways.
  65. Ghost Town
    Feels downright ancient.
  66. The Sorcerer's Apprentice
    On the whole, the movie is more Cheez Whiz than wizardly.
  67. Red Planet
    It stars the striking Moss, that fierce beauty from "The Matrix," as the sternest, sexiest babe in space since Sigourney Weaver's Lieutenant Ripley.
  68. Whatever It Takes
    You haven't heard anything until you've heard "Play That Funky Music" on the accordion.
  69. John Tucker Must Die
    Too cute by half, the high school comedy John Tucker Must Die is just so likable, so, um, cute - in that helpless-bunny-wabbit sort of way - that to diss it would be to admit being a heartless, cynical Bambi-killer.
  70. A Kid in King Arthur's Court
    A Kid in King Arthur's Court - more precisely A California Mallrat at the Round Table, in which a contemporary Little Leaguer time-travels to the 11th century and teaches Arthur how to chew bubblegum - works too hard for its occasional laugh. [11 Aug 1995, p.05]
    • Philadelphia Inquirer
  71. Taking Sides
    Boy, can Harvey Keitel be bad -- and not bad like "Bad Lieutenant," bad like bad acting.
  72. The Devil's Rejects
    Completely unhinged, a garish and gonzo walk on the wild side.
  73. Snow Dogs
    Snow Dogs? "Snow Job" is more like it.
  74. Bullet to the Head
    Sly can still fill a too-tight polo shirt at 66 - in the same way Jack LaLanne did in his later years. But no amount of movie magic can make him pass for a lethal and nimble juggernaut.
  75. Queen of the Damned
    At its best, Queen is campy fun like the Vincent Price horror classics of the '60s. At its worst, it implodes in a series of very bad special effects.
  76. The Powerpuff Girls
    Half enjoyable goof, half an uncomfortable panorama of urban terrorism that just doesn't sit well after Sept. 11.
  77. Rudy
    Tedious sports inspirational that genuflects before the mythology of Notre Dame football with the story of a walk-on who fulfilled a lifelong dream of suiting up for the Irish. [26 May 1994, p.E05]
    • Philadelphia Inquirer
  78. Stand Up Guys
    Elegiac and corny and not really convincing on any level (especially when it comes to its treatment of women - be they hookers, or waitresses, or girls on the town), Stand Up Guys nonetheless holds some fascination just for the off-the-charts affectedness of Pacino's performance.
  79. Suspect Zero
    Fails to provide one essential ingredient: suspense.
  80. Cracks
    While Scott's movie has a consistent aura, it lacks a consistent tone. What are we to make of the movie, gauzy as a mist-shrouded lake and brutal as "Lord of the Flies?"
  81. How the Grinch Stole Christmas
    It's a big stuffed turkey of a movie, just in time for the holidays.
    • Philadelphia Inquirer
  82. The Nanny Diaries
    Satire should be knife-sharp and whip-smart, and The Nanny Diaries never is.
  83. Timecode
    Gimmicky artifice.
  84. A Cinderella Story
    A mostly charmless affair.
  85. Honey
    By no means is this a good movie, but it's warmed by the solar energy of its star, who surely deserves better than this formula empowerment flick.
  86. The Grand Seduction
    In Don McKellar's remake of "Seducing Doctor Lewis", a 2003 French-Canadian comedy, the charm feels force-fed.
  87. Final Destination 3
    Fortunately for us, they number these Final Destination scarefests. Otherwise, it would be impossible to tell them apart.
  88. Hesher
    Hesher has its genuinely affecting scenes, but too much of the time it feels false and shallow.
  89. Don't Be Afraid of the Dark
    Joltingly graphic and atmospheric (Nixey and his crew at least know how to set up a few good shocks), Don't Be Afraid of the Dark fails to involve us in any meaningful way with its characters.
  90. Clerks II
    While these individually diverting factors add up to a good time, they don't add up to a good movie.
  91. Reservation Road
    George, director of "Hotel Rwanda," is better at directing actors than visual storytelling. Every time the camera tilted to suggest a character's shaken world or distorted worldview I didn't feel heartache, I felt headache.
  92. Anesthesia
    The irony of Anesthesia is that, while it uses interconnectivity as a storytelling mechanism, the characters do not really connect.
  93. Fame
    So little time is devoted to developing characters that it's hard to share their hopes and fears.
  94. The Great Gatsby
    There are so many things wrong with Luhrmann's Great Gatsby - the filmmaker's attention-deficit-disorder approach, the anachronistic convergence of hip-hop and swing, the choppy elision of Fitzgerald's plot, the jarring collision of Jazz Age cool and Millennial cluelessness. But at the crux of things, the problem is that it's impossible to care.
  95. The Wild
    Kids under 6 will dig it - though the alligators and wildebeests might scare them. Certainly they scared this groan-up.
  96. Running with Scissors
    Alas, something happened on the book-to-screen operating table: Yes, Running With Scissors is rich, twisted, insane, mordant and ridiculous, but it is not funny. Not at all.
  97. The Time Traveler's Wife
    A syrupy and extraordinarily ridiculous adaptation.
  98. Love's Labour's Lost
    Has its moments of charm, but it's ultimately a fascinating failure that surely looked better on paper than it does on the screen.
  99. Turbo
    Let's face it: Kids aren't a very demanding audience. If there's color, movement, and a high quotient of silliness, they're happy.
  100. Sugar Hill
    Their apartments are chic, the architecture is impressive, the restaurants richly appointed. And yet, while the atmosphere and cinematography of director Leon Ichaso's grandly conceived movie evoke The Godfather series (as does its theme of brother vs. brother in a criminal underworld), Barry Michael Cooper's screenplay falls short of any such epic design. [25 Feb 1994, p.03]
    • Philadelphia Inquirer
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