It's a small-minded and jejune film, and it feels strangely out-of-date considering how loaded it is with right-here-right-now signifiers.

Also, it is almost squeaky clean. It's rated PG, but without about four seconds of toilet humor and five seconds of bra ogling, Bill and Ted might have faced an insurmountable challenge: the dreaded G rating. [20 Feb 1989, p.D06]

It all sort of plays out like "Law and Order: Spiritual Victims Unit," but the movie's stuffed (some might say overstuffed) with wonderfully staged moments and set pieces.

Hoffa might have been - should have been - at least ambiguous about its controversial hero. [25 Dec 1992]

Director Guillaume Canet, who previously teamed with Cluzet on the excellent thriller "Tell No One," capably handles the sprawling cast.

The romance is boring. Everything is blandly good-looking. The emotional beats are so programmed, you can predict the entrance of every single note of the Philip Glass dirge of a score. And the title means nothing beyond its double-entendre.

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]

First-time director Jeff Baena struggles with framing, editing, tone and casting, leading to an unimpressive entry in the ever-burgeoning zombie comedy genre.

Funny and appalling, doting and possessive, petty and selfless, raunchy and righteous, Jeannie is the pivot of the charming, garish, somewhat overwritten Australian comedy Introducing the Dwights.

Dedication would've been better if it had stuck to its disreputable guns instead of going all mushy and predictable, and slathering an emo soundtrack over everything.

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

Joffe does a good job of making a complex project comprehensible to a mass audience with no memory of World War II. Moreover, he infuses drama into an often cerebral project by highlighting the tensions among the characters. [20 Oct 1989, p.E13]

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]

If the filmmakers had opted to play things closer to the vest, this could have been the clever "Pineapple Express"-meets-"The Bourne Identity" mashup it wants to be instead of the shallow, gratuitously violent exercise it actually is.

While it's focused on the people -- on men who never had mentors struggling to mentor themselves and each other -- the movie works as a smart B film.

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

Starts out dark, thrilling and inventive, then, regrettably, becomes sappy, mainstream and mundane.

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

The film oddly mirrors "The Passion of the Christ," as a show trial leads inexorably toward an almost sadistically filmed public execution (it doesn't hurt that Jim Caviezel plays the reporter). Like that movie, it gets its point across with all the subtlety, sorry to say, of a rock upside the head.

The result is an uneasy mix of social-issue realism and escapist excitement that's ultimately disposable.

Fiction can sometimes be used to access a deeper truth than mere fact, but in this case all it does is obscure and confuse a fascinating life story.

Wrapping the whole thing in a sentimental ending turns it into a fraud. The Campaign might have been truly -- and appropriately -- scabrous in other hands; those of the "South Park" guys or Mike Judge, say. But director Jay Roach and writers Shawn Harwell and Chris Henchy play it safe and down the middle. No actual political contributors or candidates need fear harm.

It's a handsome film, and made with verve, but too often the tone wobbles and far, far too many of its jokes hit with a splat.

The final third...is so overblown and anticlimactic that it finally gets you thinking about empty profundity and loose ends.

Yet another witless, listless outing by the alleged comic minds behind such dubious treats as "The State," "Stella" and "Wet Hot American Summer."

Super Ex does have a certain low-key, adult-contemporary charm. It's almost entirely because of Luke Wilson.

Those who don't go for horror films, period, won't go for this, but those who do will find this one of the more intelligent, better produced outings of late, with a good, continuing stream of sarcastic humor. [30 Oct 1987, p. E13]