She may not be the most cinematic of film artists, but Heckerling will make you smile.

The execution is so dumbed-down, so dumbfounding, that sophisticated moviegoers might confuse it for outtakes from "Spy Kids 2" and "XXX."

Essentially, the film functions as a holiday catalog, introducing fans to a new Pokemon whose effigy they can collect in trading cards.

In truth, the only hazardous material to be found in Diana - the title role assumed bravely, if mistakenly, by Naomi Watts - is the screenplay.

What Hannibal Rising is, mostly, is a hoot.

You'd think a movie about transplanting human consciousness would be smarter than this.

It's low-energy, and it's also depressing to know that people are still listening to Van Halen 20 years from now.

It stars the striking Moss, that fierce beauty from "The Matrix," as the sternest, sexiest babe in space since Sigourney Weaver's Lieutenant Ripley.

One thing Kidman is not is a clown. She thinks fizzy and dizzy and klutzy are funny. She is mistaken. To be a clown requires a kind of witchcraft.

Cutesy and formulaic and has the approximate depth of a cookie sheet.

A predictable, by-the-numbers TV-movie-sized affair which will break your heart - especially since it also contains brief flashes of horror greatness.

In terms of character, McConaughey is the toxin and Garner the antitoxin. It's not exactly chemistry, but as pharmacology it's effective.

Deliriously funny if instantly forgettable.

Peppy, painless and -- happily -- not altogether brainless.

Summery and scenic, Ruins is this season's "Mamma Mia!," a diversion that dispenses the wisdom: Let go, let live, and let love. Not bad advice, and not a bad movie, exactly.

As for The Happening, his throwback horror flick that plays like "The Birds" meets "The Blob," it's beyond good and evil. It's dumbfounding.

Bleak and painfully earnest.

Less the blistering satire it imagines itself than a blustering, bloody, blundering melodrama about bottom feeders nibbling each other.

The result is like near-beer: The taste is familiar, but the spirit is missing.

No fewer than seven writers were recruited to create the story and screenplay for Major Payne, a textbook demonstation of how more can produce less - in this case, a comedy that has all the brio and wit of an army training manual on personal hygiene. [27 March 1995, p.D02]

The film is based on the popular video game, and plays as a pathetically incoherent attempt to accommodate all the characters kids want to see come to life on the big screen. [26 Dec 1994, p.E05]

The germ of an interesting idea in Get Hard is completely overshadowed by the onslaught of jokes meant to be boundary-pushing and edgy.

That the film, directed in swift strokes by F. Gary Gray from a screenplay credited to Kurt Wimmer, doesn't really work - unrelentingly grim, unintentionally funny - is almost beside the point. It's a wild concept.

Farley, with his bowl-cut of strawberry hair and grinning double chin, does have a certain airhead charm, but Spade and his slackeresque, snooty weenie shtick, is, at best, an acquired taste. Farley seems to enjoy Spade's company, and Spade seems to be enjoying his own company, and SNL kingpin and Black Sheep producer Lorne Michaels obviously believes these guys have a future together . . . but I don't know, give me Stan and Ollie, or Bud and Lou or Dean and Jerry. Or a nice big scoop of Ben and Jerry's, for that matter. [2 Feb 1996, p.13]

Nispel is no Rob Zombie - who achieved something akin to brilliance with his 2007 Halloween remake. What's more, as influential as it's been, Friday the 13th was never that great.

But there's not much here: The characters are paper-thin, and the action is slow, at times agonizingly so.

Admittedly, it is redundant to make a comedy about the Celtics because their current team is a joke. But it is also deeply satisfying. [19 Apr 1996, p.03]

Dopey but resourceful yukfest.