Dick works best as a catalog of style: It's the story and the acting that are the window dressing.

I could see people enjoying Dan in Real Life, I guess -- the scenery is nice and the people are pretty and the songs are cute little emotion substitutes. But Dan? Buddy? It's not all about you.

Their collective timing is so off that the dead space around their endless bits is like that more commonly experienced during a job interview gone wrong.

The film drags and lingers and goes more or less nowhere, imitating its protagonists' lives so exactly that you want to give them both a good smack.

The film's structure is a reminder that being Pinteresque isn't the same as being written by Harold Pinter, and its lyrics prove that there's a big difference between something Sondheim-esque and the real deal.

Chock-full of the sort of levity that leaves you feeling you've been beaten about the head with a lead pipe.

As so often happens, politics and religion add up to a double dose of self-righteousness.

Witless, tasteless, toothless, pointless, garish, repetitive, obvious, and painfully dull, Pirate Radio is that exceedingly rare film that never, but never puts a foot right.

Not much in The Man From Elysian Fields resembles life on Earth, but there are a few moments with Jagger that feel desperate and human -- stuff from another movie entirely, in other words.

Jason Schwartzman is upstaged by his dog in 7 Chinese Brothers.

What's left is a husk with all the superficial features of a Scream movie and none of the heart, brains, guts or laughs.

From the evidence presented here, this film's three screenwriters have not only never taken a commercial flight, they've never met any actual human beings. The details of air travel and human behavior are equally foreign to the film.

A seedy little movie with little in the way of theme, purpose, energy or wit, 'R Xmas is the latest slice-of-death drama from that earnest maestro of grub, Abel Ferrara.

Tusk is a step backward into an insular world. True, it will probably play well to gore fans, and that dedicated audience who already cheer everything Smith does.

Making a movie with a sad-sack protagonist this hard to root for is like laying track for the main line express to nowhere. Watching it is like taking a ride so bumpy, with scenery so boring, that you end up hoping for a derailment. Either way, buying a ticket for The D Train is something to regret.

Might actually be the stupidest movie with good intentions that I've ever seen.

Groove seems to be less about what it is chronicling than what its attempting to decipher.

Hampered from the start by the numbingly formulaic additions by screenwriter James DeMonaco ("The Negotiator"). Toss in needlessly fussy visuals and a climax that is hilariously out of whack, and you've got an excellent excuse to stay home and watch the original.

One can only hope that the parties responsible for Bandits are brought to justice and someone can stop them before they film again.

Allen's movies, even at their lowest, have usually boasted interesting musical scores, melding jazz, classical, and American standards. Irrational Man, though, uses The Ramsey Lewis Trio's "The 'In' Crowd," an already overexposed riff, so repetitively that I thought I was seeing the film with a temp soundtrack. The real Woody, whatever his flaws, would never have allowed this. I hope he comes back someday.

A contrived and sentimental melodrama, the film takes a promising premise and crushes it with mind-numbing repetition, sophomoric conveniences, plastic acting and the worst score, perhaps, ever heard.

Goes on too long and doesn't have much to say.

It just drones on and on, so repetitiously that you wonder if some of the reels have been shown twice. [7 Nov 1992]

There are movies that are made for the big screen, and movies that are made for the small screen; Passionada is the latter type.

Would somebody please pull the plug on James Bond? It's not that Tomorrow Never Dies is inconceivably bad. What with dashing Pierce Brosnan cavorting as 007, nifty Michelle Yeoh playing chop-socky on bad guys' heads, and a nearly-sentient BMW in Bond's bag of tricks, it's got at least as much going for it as, oh, a good Steven Seagal film. [19 Dec 1997, p.19]

The animation is dull, the thought is fuzzy, the storytelling is vague and the music just plain stinks. It's not "National Velvet," it's sure not "The Black Stallion," it's not even "Dances With Wolves."

Go only if you're really, really willing to suspend disbelief. [16 Jan 1998, p.23]

It doesn't help that director Ken Kwapis stages everything like a sitcom, has no sense of pace, and buries the theme of late-life friendship under a haze of sentiment and trail dust.

The Baxter is so ineptly conceived, staged, written and played that you suspect it's part of a psychology experiment to see if people will laugh at anything.

I can see how Mamma Mia! might be a fun stage musical. As a movie musical, it's a train wreck.

It's written almost without wit or romance, it's populated by bland actors, and it's photographed as if through a Jell-O mold. If this is adolescence, then senility can't come soon enough. [29 Jan 1999]

The film manages the rare trick of improving as it unrolls from the utterly putrid to the barely tolerable. And, friends, I wish to say that sometimes that is as good as you can hope for in this racket.

This little serio-comedy contains absolutely nothing that warrants big-screen release. It's lit like TV, acted like TV and staged like TV.

Handsomely photographed, artfully edited and acted with skill and conviction. It is also so stupid that you expect to see strings of drool dripping from the corner of the screen.

Romeo Is Bleeding has a core of such mean smugness that the genuine shock is that the picture got made at all. It isn't so much that the film is violent, misogynistic and hateful. It isn't even that it so often lapses into senselessness and laughable pretense. It's that a certain competence has been deployed in the service of such degrading and juvenile material, that a group of actors and filmmakers and financial backers all said ``yes'' to something that ought never to have happened. [4 Feb 1994, p.15]

It sounds like, maybe, a cute Saturday Night Live skit, but as a serious drama, or even as an adventure melodrama -- well, it has plenty of humor, all the wrong kind. [15 May 1988, p.B06]

While this film has got a good head on its shoulders and a nicely made-up face, flawless it's not.

Unfunny and misguided, Duplex deserves a wrecking crew.

Snipes, a better actor than Bruce Willis or Steven Seagal, is nevertheless not as effective here, a lack for which three screenwriters and director Kevin Hooks must share blame. The latter have packed in every cliche they could, ruthlessly jettisoning any original ideas. [10 Nov 1992, p.G06]

It's dull and crude and silly and without a lick of quality.

The loudest, dumbest, slowest, least entertaining and most annoying by a very comfortable margin.

A new political thriller, has an ending so egregiously stupid that not to reveal it would be a disservice to moviegoers.

The all-description storytelling leads to other problems, too, the worst being that "Boleyn" suffers from the same affliction as "The Golden Compass," where you're told about interesting stuff happening elsewhere in another movie you'd much rather be watching.

While his star, Jude Law, is infectiously watchable, Shyer's version of the material is tone deaf and splotchy.

The film by writer-director C.M. Talkington answers a question no one in his right mind would want answered: What would happen if someone without a hint of Quentin Tarantino's talent made a Quentin Tarantino film? [07 Apr 1995, p.C06]

A very depressing movie.

Scenes will wander from gross-out gag to sentimental schmaltz to pervy leer to cheap nostalgia within a 30-second span, utterly free of clear directorial guidance. Even worse, very little of it is remotely funny.

It's the film, though, that remains handcuffed. The early part of the story -- with Riddick stranded on an unfriendly planet -- is taut enough, but hampered by flagrantly unreal effects and Diesel's punch-drunk narration.

Just pass on K-PAX.

The trouble is that it's so lead-footed and delighted with itself even as bit after bit sinks like a lead weight.

It's a terrible picture: ugly and illogical and clumsily staged and peppered with crude, witless humor.

The great physical production of the film may engage some viewers who don't care that the apocalyptic foreground of the novel serves as part of an interesting backdrop for a melodrama. Those who enjoyed the novel should find the film's last five minutes positively nauseating. [9 Nov 1987, p.B09]

A Lot Like Love is, well, a lot like many other movies. It's also a lot like having your eyeballs seared by a propane flame -- in a bad way.

But despite its audacious sexuality, Tokyo Decadence isn't really honest about its pornography -- or its politics. The sex scenes are more about the twisted uses of power than they are about erotica. And like a movie that purports to be anti-violent but racks up a dougle-digit body count to make its point, the film relies too much on sexual excess to make a persuasive argument against it. Its pretensions fail to conceal the emptiness at the heart of Murakami's vision. [30 July 1993, p.AE23]

Intelligent teens will hate this film, and adults will just be embarrassed.

The Counselor is nothing but a dumb, gory, grab-bag of clichés and the biggest waste of talent since "Savages." It makes Oliver Stone look subtle.

This film is uplifting, well-meant, and morally impeccable, but it has the incoherent storytelling, abysmal production values and absolute contempt for its audience one ordinarily finds only in hard-core pornography. [18 Aug 1995, p.25]

One of the most wearisome "high adrenaline" movies to come along in a while.

Both a prequel and a sequel to the original tale, only with more bloodspilling and slow-motion, and even less wit or truth.

This suspense thriller is scary, all right, but it's also distasteful and manipulative. [17 Feb 1995, p.AE22]

A dull, clumsy copy of the original The Blues Brothers, this'll give you the blues, all right. [06 Feb 1998, p.24]

Directed as if it were an after-school special, with listless performances and musical numbers (Mary J. Blige shows up as a platinum-wigged congregant), Black Nativity is as simple and condescending as Hughes' work was complex and demanding.

A witless, listless muck-up that sends you reeling from the theater with thoughts of suicide instead of a chipper grin.

Scratch the surface, and the movie's underpinnings are an insult to women everywhere -- the film is slick stupid propaganda for the myth of The One True Love that wastes the talents of fine actresses.

A limp and annoying picture.

Sayles has committed the cardinal sin of putting his politics ahead of his characters, and the result is predictably lame.

The only reliable smiles come courtesy of Steve Buscemi, a frequent presence in Sandler movies, here voicing an exasperated, over-extended werewolf dad.

The second half of Pink Cadillac is almost like a perfunctory sequel to a better film. It is slow and aimless, and when it's finally over, the strung-out finale seems especially futile. [26 May 1989, p.F11]

It's shaping up to be a long, dry summer, at least at the multiplex.

The only thing Stratton, a former television actor making his first feature, has going for him is the casting of Jessica Lange.

Flirt fails because the basic story isn't very good and its retelling adds only incidental insights. [11 Oct 1996]

So shapeless, pointless and witless a film that it can be explained only by surmising that the people who made it were bombed at the time.

It's simply an awful, awful film.

The Ringer is appalling.

Unfortunately, the movie is the worst sort of liar: an unfunny one. Its gormless, assertion-free protagonist offends as a role model for idio youths, and, even worse, offends as drama.

It's meant to be funny, but I couldn't help thinking they were figuring out where to plant the pipe bombs.

Like his (Carrey) early work, it's not a particularly good film -- insipidly staged, inanely plotted, too weak to withstand the weight of any inquiries into logic or continuity -- but Carrey's energetic mugging, particularly early on, makes it relatively painless.

What makes Saw so awful is that it starts with a clever premise and then completely blows it.

It's awful. Awful. That's all. Keep walking. For the love of all that's holy. Keep. Walking.

Here's a hint to tracking down an intelligent, discriminating significant other: stand outside the entrance to a theater showing Must Love Dogs. Once the film begins, look for the first person to walk out.

The results are not endearing. Eddie comes off not as a beleaguered Everyman but a heedless, dishonest knob trying to undo a deal that gave him exactly what he deserved. The real surprise is Carlos Mencia, playing an exuberant clerk at the resort hotel. But when Carlos Mencia is the funniest thing in your movie, you've got serious problems.

The period details are unconvincing, the cinematography is flat, and the performances are surprisingly one note considering the talent involved.

Bay seems to have been gunning for something along the lines of "Blood Simple" or "A Simple Plan," but Pain & Gain is just plain simple.

It's horrible. It's wretched. It's Limburger pickled in castor oil.

The movie falters when it gets mean.

All this star power goes for naught in Traeger's film, which tries to blend bucolic sweetness with juvenile let's-make-a-porno jokes.

The bad news is that Jefferson is inept and inert. [21 Apr 1995]

Quite possibly the single most artless gross-out comedy I have ever seen. It relentlessly slaps you with dead carp after dead carp of icky gags -- without any of the cleverness, cinematography or characterization that would give those gags even the slightest bit of juice.

A by-the-numbers recipe that ought to have shot off at least a few sparks, is as drab as the inmates' prison blues.

Peter Bogdanovich made a great screwball comedy. This isn't it.

Plays like an episode of "JAG," the naval courtroom TV series. A L-O-N-G episode.

Ponderous, pretentious and boring, Levity becomes ironic on top of itself. You won't pity these people. You'll start laughing at them. Like a clown.

Bang-bang, kiss-kiss, yawn-yawn. While dull death metal churns on the soundtrack, Johnson engages in one big brawl after another.

A dull and hackneyed would-be thriller, it takes such elements as Satanism, time-travel and cross-country treasure-hunting and combines them to no effect whatsoever. [18 Jan 1991, p.R13]

Social justice is never an excuse for bad art. In fact, one could argue that a really bad movie about a really important subject is twice the artistic crime -- because, however well-intentioned, it trivializes human suffering while squandering a teaching opportunity.

Every so often there's a tabloid news story about the Virgin Mary seen in a piece of toast or Mother Teresa on a tortilla, and most of us equate them with Elvis sightings. This film is for the rest.

An ugly, stupid movie it turned out to be. Incoherent, arbitrary, hyperactive and dark enough to make you fear you've gone blind.

Opens with a statement that Hillary Clinton, Bob Dole and Al Sharpton are not in the movie. Also not in the movie: laughs.