Most of the time, though, it's a confusing mishmash featuring a fine actor too willfully operating outside his comfort zone.

If you like this sort of thing, this is the sort of thing you'll like.

There are plenty of very funny jokes in the movie, but near-fatal lulls whenever it tries to make MacFarlane into a romantic lead or a genuinely inspiring hero — in other words, whenever it tries to make us like him.

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]

You need to accept the fact that practically everyone in the picture, particularly the leading lady, is a boneheaded nitwit.

After a cheeky, campy start, The Ninth Gate leaves you with a bitter and dull aftertaste.

There's nothing worse than a sub-par Woody Allen knockoff.

It's a Ritalin-deprived sensibility, but it keeps you skating over the dull spots, in which the film unfortunately is rich.

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.

More solidly crafted and insults its audience quite a bit less than its predecessor, and it sets up several nice emotionally complicated cliffhangers for the next installment. I hope its target audience has a blast.

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.

``Blood'' seems to be sketches for a more comprehensible film which, alas, we will not see. [28 Sept 1992, p.C08]

Full of small, weird moments.

Don't go in expecting much and you'll have fun. Consider it The Rock's "Raw Deal."

It's a sweet-natured trifle that sneaks in some social commentary about the modern military and the failings of the American educational system, and it takes a wide swipe at advertising for good measure. [03 Jun 1994]

It is off-putting at first, then refreshing, then downright touching. In short, it works.

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

An unsteady mixture of treacle and dark comedy that never feels as "dark" as it pretends. Though well-intentioned, it's not terribly compelling.

One might reasonably despise Funny Games and consider Haneke an exploitative hypocrite. Still, whether it's the original or the replica, this is a film that is impossible to enjoy and difficult to forget.

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

If the film had been trimmed to 45 minutes of crazed storm-chasing and storm-fleeing, it might've been worth a matinee ticket. But as is, it's the sort of lazy late-summer idiocy you'd be wise to huddle beneath an overpass to avoid.

Befitting a film about Edgar Allan Poe, The Raven is dark and grisly and ghoulish. But it also has qualities that Poe's work never does: It's dull and mechanical and, most of all, phony.

Sudeikis has always been a charming comedic actor. He usually doesn't have to work this hard for laughs.

It's not that Hangover II is a notably bad movie. It's more that nothing in it seems to justify all the effort spent to add a new but nearly identical series of episodes to the original.

Kyra Sedgwick is turned into a caricature of a sports agent. "NYPD Blue" grad Gordon Clapp gets one line of dialogue. And Morris Chestnut is pushed out to make room for one more "ain't she cute" moment.

Remove the razzle-dazzle provided by Azaria, Hoffman, Baldwin, the gross jokes and that ferret, and you wind up with a pretty dull and ordinary face.

Mary Reilly tries, but fails, to revive the oft-told Jekyll and Hyde horror story. [23 Feb 1996]

A mild disaster.